"Are Jews a Race?" - Rabbi Wendi Geffen's Sermon, 2-4-2022

shabbat shalom again you can close your books for a few minutes as you likely heard earlier this week whoopi goldberg found herself in hot water after comments she made on the view when she asserted that the holocaust was not about race rather it was in her words about man's human man's inhumanity to man saying it involved quote two groups of white people quote the fact that her remarks followed mere weeks after the anti-semitic fueled terror in colleyville made the whole thing feel incredibly insensitive even cruel the fact that her remarks were shared in a larger discussion about a tennessee school board's unanimous vote to ban art spiegelman's mouse from its middle school curriculum based on the book's so-called profanity and nudity made goldberg's remarks feel either stunningly ignorant or if not intentionally offensive the backlash she received was swift and harsh to her credit she apologized publicly on the view the next day noting that her universalized whitewashing those are my words of the holocaust was wrong and why quoting the anti-defamation league's jonathan greenberg stating the holocaust was about the systemic annihilation of the jewish people who they deemed to be an inferior race abc also suspended her from the view for two weeks to quote take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments to be sure there are many possible questions we might explore together tonight based around all of goldberg's remarks here are just a few how do we address the desperate need for more holocaust education across all segments of our society as surely goldberg's remarks make clear what about the need for more education and learning on the pervasiveness of anti-semitism across all segments of our society as well is a misguided or ignorant assertion about the holocaust necessarily anti-semitic can a person say something anti-semitic without being an anti-semite and does that distinction matter what counts as an apology and what consequences should an offender suffer even if they apologize and why does or doesn't that matter i could go on but tonight i want to address a more personal question for those of us who identify as jews or are part of jewish families are jews a race well what is race anyway the merriam-webster dictionary defines it as any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry speak to most anthropologists sociologists biologists even and you'll come to learn that race as we generally understand and have internalized it as a concept is not in fact real consider this example from 1937 in america when the new york daily news sports editor paul gallico was trying to explain away jewish dominance in basketball just did you hear that in 1930s the jews dominated in basketball i wasn't there then but that's amazing but he was trying to explain it away and here's what he wrote basketball appeals to the hebrew because the game places a premium on an alert scheming mind and flashy trickiness artful dodging and general smart aliceness not to mention their god-given better balance and speed i'm not sure what happened to these god-given qualities that they're talking about these are not in my family but it's amazing that they existed in the 30s reflecting on this though american political commentator adam sewer notes gallico came up with the idea that the game structure simply appealed to the immutable traits of wiley hebrews and their scheming minds it sounds strange to the ear now but only because our stereotypes about who is inherently good at particular sports have shifted his theory is not any more or less insightful now than it was then his confidence should remind us to be skeptical of similar supposedly explanatory arguments that abound today looking back at old stereotypes is a useful exercise it can help illustrate the arbitrary nature of the concept of race and how such identities shift even as people insist on their permanence and infallibility because race is not real it is malleable enough to be made to serve the needs of those with the power to define it the certainties of one generation giving way to the contradictory dogmas of another so are jews a race you may be interested to know that the first reference to jews as a race sources to the book of exodus the same book of torah from which we are reading right now the claim is made there not by the torah's narrative voice but by the pharaoh of egypt suggesting that the israelites were so fertile that they would become too populous and overtake the egyptians and revolt and pharaoh uses this rationale to justify the ensuing campaign of infanticide and enslavement later the introduction of pure blood laws by the spanish courts of the inquisition to discern who was and wasn't jewish marked the first significant historical articulation of jews as a race subjugating the previously dominant identifying factor of judaism as a religion to that of a race noting that even jews who had converted to christianity were still jews catalyzing what they came to call jewish contamination that might sound familiar to you as a term because it was that same notion that fueled hitler and the nazi regime's claims that the jews had particular racial features and a quote genetic propensity towards certain behaviors and beliefs which deemed them necessarily inferior and ultimately deserving of eradication even the term anti-semitism itself was coined by a jew hater in 1879 german german german journalist wilhelm wilhelm maher a lot to say there felt the notion of anti-judaism hating jews based on their religious identity was not expansive enough so he coined anti-semitism to mean hatred of the jewish race adding racial and pseudoscientific overtones to the animus behind the word notice anything each of these examples has in common with the other each one is a construct made up by whom not us our enemies weaponized to justify one thing alone their shared hatred of the jew so our jews erase it should be noted that there are some jews who have internalized this idea of judaism as a race much of this is a reaction to the externalized and ironically anti-semitic definition of such for others there can be as rabbi angela bookdahl teaches a certain pride in feeling that there is something inherited about jewish chosenness and either way if that notion is rooted deeply in the core of how a person conceives of their own jewish identity then that can be pretty difficult to let go of so who gets to decide the answer to how we define what judaism is or is not perhaps we can look back at how the torah our book describes our people in its own voice not from our enemies viewpoint but rather from our own when the israelites first leave egypt they are accompanied by an erev rav which likely means mixed multitude whom the commentators describe were the many egyptians and people from other nations who became a part of our people through conversion or assimilation from the very beginning of our peoplehood as a collective there was always intermixing as it were later when the temple was destroyed and the diaspora created the jews found themselves literally spread across the world birthing the pre-modern diaspora communities of ashkenazic jews sephardic jews mizrahi jews and ethiopian jews too with roots from eastern and western europe the middle east africa and asian countries and today because of conversion intermarriage and adoption growing numbers of american jews are of color or have latino asian or african-american ancestry in fact the most recent 2021 pew study on the jewish population reported that 8 of jews identify as something other than white among 18 to 29 year old jews that number jumps to 15 percent roughly one in seven so what are we how do we define who and what we are i personally like how yair rosenberg who writes about anti-semitism for the atlantic answers this question here's what he says jewish identity doesn't conform to western categories despite centuries of attempts by society to shoehorn it in this makes sense because judaism predates western categories it's not quite a religion because one can be jewish regardless of observance or specific belief but it's also not quite a race because people can convert in it's not merely a culture or an ethnicity because that leaves out all the religious components over the years smart people have used terms like civilization or peoplehood or tribe to describe the jewish collective but because those words are not as straightforward to the average person i prefer family me too we can be born into a family adopted into a family or choose to be a part of a family through partnership or covenant and coming to think of ourselves this way serves not to universalize or diminish our judaism but rather to powerfully and expansively reclaim all of the many nuanced pieces that make up our particular jewishness a reclamation that honors and invites us into our own understanding of who we are as jews and jewish families in relation to ourselves in relation to each other and in the relationships we have with our world shabbat shalom

Channel: North Shore Congregation Israel

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Length: 12min 23sec (743 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022