What is a Jew?

Extract

The question presents difficulties. It would not be asked if the answer was obvious. But the answer is not obvious because the name Jew seems to be used with diverse meanings both by Jews and others. Some give the name primarily a racial significance; a Jew is just one who is born of Jewish parents. Others give the name primarily a national significance; a Jew is one who belongs to a distinctive nation which has a culture of its own, a language of its own, national characteristics of its own, and, they would add, needs a national home or political state of its own. Others give the name Jew a religious content; a Jew is one who is an adherent of Judaism.

These diverse, and divergent, uses of the name Jew arise out of the Jews’ long history. The definition of a Jew must be related to the definition of the Jews as a group. What constitutes a Jew obviously depends on the basis and nature of the collective life of Jews. There are, in general, three categories of human groups— races, nations and religions. Into which of these do the Jews fit? Or, to put the question the other way about, which of these descriptions fits the Jews?

No one of them fits the Jews exactly. For one thing, Jews began their collective existence at a time when these categories were undifferentiated; they simply did not exist in the ancient world. They are comparatively modern divisions. There were separate human groups which included in their collective life all, or nearly all, that is now included under the terms race, nation and religion. That is still largely the case in the part of the Eastern world where the Jews originated; though the influences of the West are producing a growing distinction between religion and nation. The conception of nationality is, however, new.