Where do the labels "Jewish" and "Judaism" come from?

In our last class there was a question about where the term "Jewish" or "Judaism" comes from. The Hebrew for Judaism is Y'hadut, and the root of that word comes from the biblical tribe of Judah. Judah was also one of Jacob's many sons, and Judah later became the name of the Southern Kingdom of Israel (after the land was divided after the death of King Solomon). Thus for many many years, to be a Jew, was to link one's ancestry back to biblical times and to the land of Israel. However, as we discussed in class, this ancestral tracing did not always bode well for the Jewish people. We know that anti-Semitism plagued the Jewish people and they longed to have their religion and identity understood in a different way.



The rise of Judaism: According to theologian Eugene Borowitz, Judaism is a term that was coined only after the 19th century. The 19th century Jews liked this term because with it, they were able to explain their status to their Enlightenment compatriots. Modern people understood 'isms' like capitalism, socialism, or Protestantism and Catholicism, and the 19th Century Jews wanted to join that modern fraternity. However, as we have seen in class, this classification as an 'ism' can be problematic when it comes to defining Jewish life.

The nineteenth-century pioneers of modern Jewish life welcomed the term
"Judaism" for it effectively explained their status to the general society. It
unambiguously proclaimed the Jews were a religion, a status which entitled them
to remain a separate group. It also defined the Jewish difference in terms of
beliefs and ideas thus refuting any charge that the Jews could not give full
political loyalty to their new nations. Moreover this self identification [of an
ism]... allowed Jews to argue that...their ethics and monotheism, was far more
acceptable to a modern mind than was Christianity to which Jews were being urged
to convert. (Liberal Judaism, Eugene B. Borowitz p. 50)

The problem with calling the Jewish religion an 'ism' however is that the all important ethnic component (the civilization piece in the words of Mordechai Kaplan), is thus taken out. The Enlightenment Jews may have wanted to remove the ethnic piece. They wanted to be seen as intellectually serious and modern. They did not want to be set apart from the rest of society. They had also seen what havoc had come to the Jews via anti-Semitism because of the focus on the tribal or the ethnic. But that still leaves us in a modern conundrum.

Are we a race as some in our class assert, or is Judaism a system of beliefs, like all of the other isms. The truth is that these two classifications do not work. Jewish theologians have struggled with this definition question for many years. Here again, I fall back on Kaplan. American Jews live in two civilizations at once. I have a national identity as an American, and an ethnic, spiritual and religious identity as a Jewish person. Ours is a deep and rich traditon, and in some ways, it defies classification.

What is Judaism

Defining this word is our task together as a class. As we have seen, this is not an easy exercise. I have refered often to Mordechai Kaplan's idea (and book of the same name) Judaism as a Civilization. In essence, Kaplan proposed that American Jews live in two worlds, American civil society with all of its trappings of citizenship, and the Jewish civilization. For Kaplan, the Jewish Civilization has a unique language, culture, religious tradition, history, etc. I find that this metaphor is useful in understanding that Judaism differs from other faith traditions in that its scope is wider than religion. Jewish life, Kaplan contends, is a round experience filled with culture, art, music and literature. One who is a member of the Jewish people, not only shares history and traditions with fellow Jews, but is a member of the people Israel which is a kind of national identity.

Welcome!

There is just not enough time to respond to all of the questions raised in our Introduction to Judaism class. I created this blog as an experiment to provide answers and responses to many of the questions. Resources will be catalogued here as well. Please post with more questions and let me know if this is a helpful format. Many thanks!