#ethnoreligion

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people ask a question about Judaism and I or somebody else says “Well, Judaism is an ethnoreligion” and they’re like “How can a religion be ethnic?”

For the purposes of this poll, consider yourself jewish if you are undertaking the conversion process.

Also for the purposes of this poll: if you would like to apply nuance to your answer, feel free to do so in reblogs, tags, replies, or even in my inbox, and vote according to the answer that most closely aligns with your nuanced take.

Judaism is an ethnoreligion, the religion of the Jewish people.

The best way to explain Judaism is using the tribe model. A lot of times Judaism is a community first and a religion second, i.e., your level of religiousness is rarely a thing that alienate you from the community.

Think of other tribes, like the Sámi, Aboriginal Australians, Māori, Yurok, Inuit ect. Each have their own unique religion, but we do not think of them as a religious group, because the tribal identity is more important, and the religion is considered part of the culture, not the opposite.

IMORTANT SIDENOTE: I am aware that many of those tribes, and other tribes have a big chunk of Christians in them, usually more Christians than those who follow the indigenous religion of the tribe. BUT for the sake of discussion, I am equating Judaism to the section that does follow the indigenous religion of the tribe.

So, despite the fact that the religious structures of Judaism is very integral to Judaism, it is partly because of the community based focus of Judaism. The most basic example is the Minyan, the fact that prayer is preferred to be done in a group. Or the fact that the Sader is meant to be a celebrated in a group. and so on.

Anyway, I think it's super cool that you have degrees in archaeology and anthropology and jewish studies! I'm in my second year of my linguistic anthropology degree, so I'm just super passionate and interested in learning perspectives when it comes to anthropology! I'm 100% open to learning from you :)

i just want to say: i really appreciate you and appreciate you wanting to learn, thank you 😭💙 yay for more anthropology folks! and no worries, i didnt see anything you wrote as bad faith.

i saved your message and when i get some energy and time, and braincells back, i’ll answer and discuss.

the main thing i’m going to say now is this all demonstrates issues with new curriculum. and:

there is a difference between ethnoreligions and universalizing religions. universalizing religions like christianity took on folk practices of the people they wanted to convert. christianity was especially adept at this. that is what irish catholicism is, same with mexican and bolivian catholicism. even German catholicism and french catholicism and even russian orthodoxy. russians took on christianity and made it their own…but they still eradicated their own indigenous religions.

we would not say the objibwe who were converted and forced to be christians etc are practicing an ethnoreligious form of christianity today. groups that were converted by a universalizing religion are usually not practicing their actual indigenous religion today.

(am i saying irish and objibwe are the same? no but there are similar experiences.)

i bring up american indigenous groups because it seems like if colonization happened in modern memory, people can understand the concepts. however, if it happened in ancient or medieval times, people refuse to wrap our minds around it and come up with revisionist history. either way, the irish people were conquered and colonized and did not keep their indigenous religion.

do the irish still use burial mounds and cairns? not entirely, no. they merged folk traditions INTO the universalizing religion. there is a difference. is lebor gabála érenn used as a religious text with religious history? no. it and other polytheist irish books were REPLACED by catholicism. now it’s considered myth.

are irish an ethnicity? maybe, sure. but ethnicity and ethno religion are two different terms.

💙 i’ll add more later esp about language but i already expanded on that in a previous post. irish was not the language used for religious life until the 60s. that was latin lmao.

ethnoreligions like druze, yazidi, assyrian, judaism, etc have all been colonized and conquered but still retained our distinct indigenous religions and cultures and languages. yes the irish retained folk practices and brought back their language, but did they keep a distinct and unique religion? no. they kept their universalizing religion, the religion of their conquerors. that is a different thing.

part of my archaeology and anthro programs was taking anthro of religion, as well as archaeology classes on various groups, including my own two: jews and irish. i wrote one of my theses on irish burial rituals and archaeological sites and how they reflected polytheist practices of the times. i am frankly shocked that irish catholicism is now referred to as an ethnoreligion. that is not only not true, but disrespectful to the cultural practices and religions that were eradicated in ireland. the entire point of the term ethnoreligion was to discuss religions outside of the universalizing ones so idek wtf.

A person becomes part of the Jewish ethnicity when they convert to Judaism. Ethnicity is more than DNA, it's about your peoplehood. As a student of anthropology I honestly don't like how the rise of at-home DNA test kits have put into people's minds their identity is a complicated equation of DNA percentages. People are not math problems. If you were born Jewish you are 100% Jewish. If you converted to Judaism you are 100% Jewish. DNA tests only measure the genes you're more likely to share with certain populations, and even then they're not completely accurate. Ethnicity isn't about blood quantum, at least it shouldn't be.

Here's an example, using myself:

I've never taken a DNA test, and don't intend to, but if I had to guess it would probably give me a result of something like: 58% Ashkenazi Jewish; 25% Northern European; 15% Sephardi Jewish; 2% Northern African.

What does that tell me about my ethnicity? Nothing. It tells me percentages of DNA I have that are most likely shared with certain populations of people from certain geographic regions (haplogroups), but my ethnicity is 100% Jewish and I don't need a DNA test to tell me that, because I know I was born Jewish.

DNA tells you your haplotypes. Peoplehood tells you your ethnicity. And peoplehood is defined by the people themselves.

Samaritan High Priest ʿAmram Yitzḥaq Cohen (עַמְרָם יִצְחָק כֹּהֵן) (left) in Shechem שְׁכֶם, also known as Nablus نابلس, showcasing a Samaritan Torah scroll, Feb. 1963.

Brothers ʿAmram (right) and Tsedaka ben Yitzḥaq Cohen צְדָיָה בֶּן־יִצְחָק כֹּהֵן (left) (1894-1971, political leader of the Samaritans in Nablus / Shehem 1930-1970) in the 1960s. Photos from the archive of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), who funded the construction of a Samaritan school in the area.