by Lynne Koral
Jewish identity means many different things to many people, whether they are Jewish or non-Jewish. Many people think of Judaism as two things: Israel and the Holocaust. There are many eons of history that go beyond those simple tropes. At a talk I went to on Feb. 9, Jewish identity is culture, nationality, ethnicity, gastronomic Judaism, as one rabbi told me, education and learning, religion and practice, and even a racial group, even though many Jews are white. But there are about a million Jews of color.
There are only 16 million Jews in the world. Seven million are in Israel. Only two-tenths of one percent of the world is Jewish, and Jews comprise two percent of the United States.
Jews were only allowed to have certain professions in medieval times, and there were all sorts of tropes about blood libel, meaning that Jews were responsible for killing Christ and for killing Christian children. Many Jews were forced to convert, but even if they could convert, the powers that be did not trust them, since they knew that they were Jewish by birth.
There was a period that this speaker, Nancy Koppelman, called emancipation in the 1800s. This was a period when Jews thought of themselves as from the country they lived in in the Diaspora when they were dispersed all over the world. They could engage in all sorts of professions. But that did not last long. Anti-Semitism will never leave us because Jews are a convenient group for people to blame things on, said Koppelman.
When Jews were money-lenders and bankers, that was the only profession they were allowed to pursue. They read better than other groups, and people resented that. Jews were blamed for the economic strife in Europe. During the economic and political strife, many came to the United States. Even if people did not practice Judaism and were Jewish by ethnicity and culture, they could still be killed in the Holocaust. Since October 7, there is greater anti-Semitism.
In Washington, there are not that many Jews. When I lived in Alaska, even fewer people were Jewish. In ACB, we have talked about being a minority within a minority. This was a term from an article and one with which we agree in the Jewish Hour. We are minorities in ACB as Jews, and we are a minority within the Jewish community as blind people. There was a need for Jews to get together to educate non-Jews and to be supportive of each other in ACB. Also, many people do not understand the many facets of Judaism. As explained above, Jews are a very small part of the world and American population. There are large Jewish communities in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.
People who consider themselves culturally Jewish do not pray, go to synagogue, celebrate holidays, know Hebrew, or generally do not believe in God. However, some of my relatives spoke Yiddish, which was common in Europe in the 1800s. That was the way I grew up, even though we did go to people's coming of age celebrations -- a bar or bat mitzvah. Being Jewish is a culture, food, sharing holidays in a secular way such as Passover. Passover is about freedom, although Rabbi Lenny says every holiday is about one form of freedom or another.
Most people do not know about the Holocaust, and it is not being taught in schools. It is up to us to be curious and ask questions and to honor different cultures. Many Jews marry outside of the religion, and I think there will be even fewer Jewish people than there are now. Thank you for listening.