What makes jews jewish

The Conservative and Reform movements are particularly strong in the United States but have yet to make significant inroads in Israel. Reconstructionism is a small and relatively new movement. Orthodoxy has grown in recent years in the United States and remains the strongest movement in Israel. The Orthodox, more so than the other movements, are also divided among different sects.

The Jewish movements have different interpretations of the Torah , which lead to different rituals , spiritual practices and beliefs. In Israel, questions of Jewishness have implications for immigration, conversion, marriage, divorce, and the allocation of government money. The original name for the people we now call Jews was Hebrews. Another name used for the people is Children of Israel or Israelites, which refers to the fact that the people are descendants of Jacob , who was also called Israel.

Judah was the ancestor of one of the tribes of Israel , which was named after him. Originally, the term Yehudi referred specifically to members of the tribe of Judah, as distinguished from the other tribes of Israel.

After that time, the word Yehudi could properly be used to describe anyone from the kingdom of Judah, which included the tribes of Judah, Benjamin , and Levi , as well as scattered settlements from other tribes. The most obvious biblical example of this usage is in Esther , where Mordecai is referred to as both a Yehudi and a member of the tribe of Benjamin. In approximately B. However, this technically inaccurate usage is common both within the Jewish community and outside of it, and is therefore used throughout this site.

According to Jewish law , a child born to a Jewish mother or an adult who has converted to Judaism is considered a Jew; one does not have to reaffirm their Jewishness or practice any of the laws of the Torah to be Jewish.

According to Reform Judaism, a person is a Jew if they were born to either a Jewish mother or a Jewish father. Also, Reform Judaism stresses the importance of being raised Jewish; if a child is born to Jewish parents and was not raised Jewish then the child is not considered Jewish.

No affirmation or upbringing is needed if the mother was Jewish. Besides for differing opinions on patrilineal descent , the various streams also have different conversion practices. Conversion done under the auspices of an Orthodox rabbi, entails Jewish study, brit milah for men , mikvah for both men and women and a stated commitment to follow the laws of the Torah.

Conservative conversions use the same requirements as the Orthodox do; however, conversions by the Reform movement and other streams do not have the same requirements. Since the conversion practices are not uniform, many Orthodox Jews do not recognize Reform or Conservative conversions as valid and, hence, do not consider the converts Jews. Once a person has converted to Judaism, he is not referred to by any special term; he is as much a Jew as anyone born Jewish.

Many people have asked why traditional Judaism uses matrilineal descent to determine Jewish status, especially because for tribal affiliation, priestly status, and royalty, patrilineal descent determines membership. The Torah does not specifically state anywhere that matrilineal descent should be used; however, there are several passages in the Torah where the child of a Jewish woman and a non-Jewish man is considered a Jew, and several other passages where the child of a non-Jewish woman and a Jewish man is not considered a Jew.

From this, one can infer that a child of a non-Jewish male spouse is Jewish and can be turned away from Judaism, but the child of a non-Jewish female spouse is not Jewish and turning away is not an issue. On the other hand, in Ezra , the Jews returning to Israel vowed to put aside their non-Jewish wives and the children born to those wives.

They could not have put aside those children if those children were Jews. People sometimes ask how King David could be a Jew given that one of his female ancestors, Ruth , was not a Jew. However, Ruth converted to Judaism before marrying Boaz and bearing Obed. In Ruth she states her intention to convert. After she converted, Ruth was Jewish, and her children born after the conversion were Jewish as well.

In , Israel adopted the Law of Return stating that every Jew has the right to immigrate to Israel and granting automatic citizenship and benefits to any Jew who makes aliyah. Jewish immigrants receive better benefits than non-Jewish immigrants, including guaranteed housing, ulpan Hebrew language study , full tuition for graduate degrees, and other benefits including discounts on major purchases, such as cars and appliances.

The absorption process is more arduous for non-Jews and may take many years, during which they might not have health insurance and other government services. There he worked as a slave laborer and escaped to Mir where he worked for the police as a translator. Rufeisen took advantage of his position and smuggled arms to his Jewish friends and helped drive the police out from Mir before it was liquidated, saving nearly Jews.

Rufeisen hid in the forest and later a convent, where he decided to convert to Christianity. In , Rufeisen, now Brother Daniel, applied to immigrate to Israel and, after being denied, he appealed to the Supreme Court.

The Court ruled that despite the fact he was born to a Jewish mother, he had since converted and should not be recognized as a Jew by the State of Israel. The Shalit case challenged this new ruling. Benjamin Shalit married a non-Jewish Scottish woman.

Since he was an Israeli, she and their children automatically received Israeli citizenship. The decision sparked controversy and, in , an amendment to the Law of Return passed stating that only persons born to a Jewish mother or who had converted to Judaism were allowed to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. In recent years, a number of high-profile commentators have appropriated these scientific insights to push the idea that genetics can determine who we are socially, none more controversially than the former New York Times science writer Nicholas Wade.

In his book, A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History, Wade argues that genetic differences in human populations manifest in predictable social differences between those groups. His book was strongly denounced by almost all prominent researchers in the field as a shoddy incarnation of race science, but the idea that our DNA can determine who we are in some social sense has also crept into more mainstream perspectives.

And indeed, this already appears to be happening. In the United States, white nationalists have channeled the ideals of racial purity into an obsession with the reliability of direct-to-consumer DNA testing.

Most concerning is how the conflation of genetics and racial identity is being mobilized politically. In February, the New York Times reported that authorities in China are using DNA testing to determine whether someone is of Uighur ancestry, as part of a broader campaign of surveillance and oppression against the Muslim minority. While DNA testing in Israel is still limited to proving Jewishness in relation to religious life, it comes at a time when the intersections of ethnic, political and religious identity are becoming increasingly blurry.

Shlomo Sand, an Israeli historian who has written extensively on the politics of Jewish population genetics, worries that if DNA testing is normalized by the Rabbinate, it could be used to confirm citizenship in the future. For Sand, there is a particularly dark irony that this type of genetic discrimination is being weaponized by Jews against other Jews. But for Seth Farber, the problem with a DNA test for Jewishness runs deeper than politics; it contravenes what he believes to be the essence of Jewish identity.

The central principle is that when it comes to Jewish identity, the most important determinants are social — trust, kinship, commitment — not biological. That would be an unwarranted and radical reinterpretation of Jewish law. As I was reporting this story, it often struck me as oxymoronic that an institution like the Rabbinate would embrace new technology to uphold an ancient identity.

It seemed to contradict the very premise of Orthodoxy, which, by definition, is supposed to rigidly maintain tradition in the face of all that is new and unknown. But Jessica Mozersky, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University in St Louis, explained that part of the reason why the Rabbinate might be comfortable with using DNA to confirm Jewishness is because of an existing familiarity with genetic testing in the community to screen for rare genetic conditions.

In fact, the Orthodox Jewish community is so comfortable with the idea of genetic identity that they have even put together their own international genetic database called Dor Yeshorim , which acts as both a dating service and public health initiative. When two members of the community are being set up for marriage, Mozersky explained, the matchmaker will check whether or not they are genetically compatible on the DNA database.

This is something I could identify with. Everyone in my grade gathered on the basketball courts to provide spit samples that were sent off and screened for Tay-Sachs disease, a rare inherited disorder significantly more common among Ashkenazi Jews that eats away at the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. As we waited in line, we joked that this was our punishment for our ancestors marrying their cousins.

I was interested in her thoughts on my newly discovered genetic identity, which seemed to connect me biologically to the world she grew up in, a world of insularity, religiosity, tradition, and trauma. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions.

It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. Newsletters Donate My Account. Research Topics. The categories are: Jews by religion — people who say their religion is Jewish and who do not profess any other religion ; Jews of no religion — people who describe themselves religiously as atheist, agnostic or nothing in particular, but who have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish and who still consider themselves Jewish in some way.

In addition, the survey interviewed: Non-Jewish people of Jewish background — people who have a Jewish parent or were raised Jewish but who, today, either have another religion most are Christian or say they do not consider themselves Jewish; Non-Jewish people with a Jewish affinity — people who identify with another religion in most cases, Christianity or with no religion and who neither have a Jewish parent nor were raised Jewish but who nevertheless consider themselves Jewish in some way.

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