Is Jewish an ethnicity and religon or just a religon? does an ethnicity have t derive from a certain country?

Question

im in an argument with a friend and he says that being jewish is only a religon and not an ethnicity. he says a jews ethnicity is isreal because thats "where jewish people are from".

Answer 1

You are both right. The point of confusion is that today, the vast majority of the Jewish people are not actively practicing the Jewish religion.

Orthodox Jews, who are the most dedicated adherents to the religion, are only perhaps 10-15% of the Jewish population. The rest are "Jewish" by their familial ties, thus Jews are an ethnic group. The traditional definition of a Jew is one who has a Jewish mother. Due to historically very low intermarriage rates, Jews have preserved this ethnic group over the millenia. In fact, the Jewish people today can trace their roots to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Bible. It was Moses who led the Jewish nation out from Egypt about 3300 years ago.

While the gene pool is not pure (e.g. there have been conversions, intermarriages, rapes etc.), several recent genetic studies have pointed to the homogeneity of the Jewish gene pool today.

The Romans exiled the Jews from the land of Israel about 1900 years ago, and Jews were spread all around the Roman empire. Since then, numerous expulsions, inquisitions, persecutions, and more recently the Holocaust, have forced Jews to resettle from country to country.

It wasn't until the late 1800's that small numbers of Jews started trickling back to the land of Israel, and not until 1948 that Israel was granted sovereignty as the modern Jewish state. Today only about a third of the world's Jews live in Israel, there are still many in America, Russia, and other countries.

So today you could find a Russian Jew, and Israeli Jew and an American Jew who don't know eachother, don't speak the same language or carry the same passport, but they may share identical ancestry. Geography and citizenship are not defining factors for Jewishness.

Answer 2

Your friend is only partially correct. Judaism is a religion, period. It is also true that, traditionally, large numbers of Jews lived in Eastern Europe and so took on the ethnic cultural traits of that region. However, a large number of Jews lived in Spain as well, and these Jews (the Sephardic Jews) have a completely different culture. I personally would not say that there is an Israeli ethnicity because the vast majority of Israeli Jews have come from other parts (all parts) of the world.

Answer 3

Ethnicity refers to the process of genetic mutation and drift over many generations within a geographically isolated population resulting in distinguishing physical characteristics. It may span several or more countries, since geopolitical boundaries generally came long AFTER genetic differentiation.

Jewish people share various denominations of one religion, Judaism, and two separate and distinct ethnicities: Sephardic and Ashkenazi. Sephardic Jews are Semitic descendants of the original Hebrews; Ashkenazi Jews (from Germany, Poland and Russia in recent history) are descended from a Slavic people who converted to Judaism many centuries ago.

Answer 4

Being a Jew describes a religion and an ethnicity. But ethnic Jews are not necessarily religious.

Ethnicity can span several countries.

Answer 5

Being a Jew is BOTH.

Jews come from the 12 tribes of Israel, all born of Abraham. They are a race and a religion.

Answer 6

Judaism is a religion not an ethnicity.