What is "Jewish?" 2. The evolution of "Jewish"
http://www.zionism-israel.com/israel_news/2011/01/08/what-is-jewish-2-the-evolution-of-jewish/
"Jewish" does not seem to describe a religion today (See: What is "Jewish?" 1. Is it a religion?) since many Jews do not believe in god or follow any religious practices. This is true regardless of how the term is used in ordinary language.
If "Jewish" described members of a religion, the statements "Albert Einstein was Jewish", "Benjamin Disraeli was Jewish," "Baruch Spinoza was Jewish" would be instantly recognizable as incorrect.Einstein practiced and professed no religion. Disraeli was baptized and Spinoza was excommunicated. "Jewish" does not refer to a religious identity. both in Israel and the United States, but probably for different reasons.
In the United States, even the adherents of the different religious "Judaisms" cannot claim to belong to a single religion. Adherents of Reconstructionist Judaism may make pictures of their God and speculate about his multiple natures. Adherents of Neturei Karteh Judaism insist that being against the state of Israel is part of the Jewish "religion" and fundamental to their "Judaism." How and why did we get that way?
Jewishness was born a very long time before the concepts of religion and nationality evolved in Europe. Jews are one of a kind – a group that has survived for thousands of years, a religion centered about a non-existent homeland, a people detached from national life. In the days of the first Temple and before, there was probably no concept of "Jewishness." The Bible generally refers to "Bnei Yisrael"and separately to the people (am) Yisrael. The earliest reference to "Yehudi" – Jewish may be in the writings of the prophet Zechariah after the return from the Babylonian exile:
ZECHARIAH 8:23 Thus saith the LORD of Hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you.
Hasmonean coins, about 100 B.C.E. referred to "the Community (Chever) of the Jews (Yehudim)." The scroll of Esther refers extensively to "Yehudim" and "Yehudi," but the date of this book is uncertain. "Jewish" as a syncretic national and religious identity seems to have been established some time in the Second Temple period. The name "Yehudi" is borrowed from the name of the surviving tribe of Judah, but this obvious semantic derivation is os less interest than the concept of Jewishness.
At this time there was both a Jewish community under Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel, and at least two concentrations of Jews in exile – in Iraq and in Alexandria. The Diasporas of Iraq (Babylonia) and Alexandria were not passive aggregations of Jewish individuals, but organized and recognized self-sufficient communities under centralized direction.
The Babylonian community was ruled by an elected or appointed Exilarch, an institution that began with the exile of the First Temple and continued into the tenth century CE. Alongside the Exilarch and his scholars, the heads of the Sura and Pumbedita academies provided exclusively religious guidance, but the rule of the Exilarch had to be in accordance with Jewish law. insofar as concerned the internal workings of the Jewish community. The Alexandrian community was ruled by an appointed or elected ethnarch. All of the organization of Jewish religious observance was predicated on the existence of a Jewish community. Kosher food required the existence of Kosher slaughterers, prayer required a quorum (minyan) of ten, marriage required the availability of suitable Jewish mates, education required community supported teachers who were knowledgeable in Hebrew and in the law.
The pattern of self-contained communities was emulated and extended after the final destruction of the Temple, both in Christian Europe and in the Arab world. In exceptional cases, such as Shmuel Hanagid of Granada, the ethnarch also had power in the state government.
Even before the fall of the Temple, Judaism came to be defined as a community religion and the Jews came to be identified, and to identify themselves, as members of that community. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Talmud and Mishnah did not need to revolutionize the Jewish religion after the fall of the Temple, because the Jewish religion had in fact been practiced outside the land of Israel for hundreds of years in the Jewish mini-states of the Diaspora. The religion of the Mishnah shows distinct departures from ancient Jewish belief, such as belief in an afterlife, which probably was a product of contact with Babylonian and Persian thought. Small wonder then, that the rabbis of Babylonia could quickly codify the practice of Judaism outside the Jewish state, and put this code in the Babylonian Talmud. They had already been practicing Judaism of this sort for almost a millennium. They did not sacrifice in the Temple, nor did they go to Jerusalem three times each year. All the regulations that applied to civil law could not apply to them if they conflicted with laws of the host state.
Jews did not exist anywhere as individuals, but as members of a community. This was true legally as well personally. The authorities granted rights to communities (for example, here). Individual Jews interfaced only with Jewish authorities, the Dayanim (religious judges) in some communities, or as they were called in England, the "Jewish Bishops."
Their "Jewish" identities came to be molded around the local Jewish community. A network of rabbinic correspondence and responsa assured that the scattered communities would remain synchronized, and allowed the dissemination of innovations such as monogamy, the Passover Haggadah and new prayers. Communities that were cut off from communication maintained their internal cohesion and identification as Jews, but generally drifted away from the practical observance of Jewish ritual.
"Jewries" were probably not the only autonomous communities in pre-modern life. The organization of monarchical entities without a modern bureaucracy for enforcement of the law and collection of taxes, required that the "state" consist of numerous essentially feudal relations with different communities. However, the organization of Jewish community life took advantage of this circumstance to establish a semi-autonomous community life pattern that did not change in its essentials from the ancient Babylonian and Persian empires, in the Roman and Muslim empires, and in the early European monarchies. In some places in Eastern Europe, the autonomy of the Jewish communities seems to have increased after the supposed end of the Middle Ages and extended to civil jurisdiction and corporal punishment.
It was not possible to be a Jew outside the Jewish community or in opposition to it. Excommunication, which was not the only weapon of the Jewish community, was a fearsome punishment. It also assured, in most cases, that there would would be no non-conforming Jews. Baruch Espinosa was a first and perhaps singular exception. The "Jewish community" and "Jewry" were not names given to abstract collections of individuals, but real organizational entities that collected taxes and paid taxes, issued decrees, demanded loyalty and provided essential services.
This world of Jewry was rudely disrupted by the changes in European society that were already beginning in the Fifteenth century, and were always evident in the United States, a revolutionary transformation that will be examined here.
Ami Isseroff
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