Are Euro-American Jews white? And if so, have we always been white? Your thoughts welcomed....
Submitted for your consideration....Until recently (perhaps the last half-century of so), Jews and the Jewish community were often the targets of virulent anti-semitism, akin to racism both in the intensity of its irrationality and in the efficacy of the institutional barriers it established.
Jews could bypass such barriers through conversion, assimilation, through "passing." Well, sometimes, but not always. The Nazi-era's use of generations of church baptismal records allowed that regime to root out long-hidden or long-forgotten Jewish ancestry, and made Jewishness a matter of racial identity, not religious belief.
So, what does it mean in the context of an anti-racist, social justice movement that Euro-American Jews are typically people who look white?
And what might it mean for Jews to claim "un-whiteness?"
Where should the loyalties of Euro-American Jews lie?
Jews could bypass such barriers through conversion, assimilation, through "passing." Well, sometimes, but not always. The Nazi-era's use of generations of church baptismal records allowed that regime to root out long-hidden or long-forgotten Jewish ancestry, and made Jewishness a matter of racial identity, not religious belief.
So, what does it mean in the context of an anti-racist, social justice movement that Euro-American Jews are typically people who look white?
And what might it mean for Jews to claim "un-whiteness?"
Where should the loyalties of Euro-American Jews lie?
posted by Jewish Community Action Staff at 10:11 AM
1 Comments:
Whether Jews are White or should be considered White it's not the way to put it.
Obviously they are White but certainly of different ethnic make-ups than than most Europeans with a Jewish identity but with visibly amalgameted phenotypes even among themselves. They don't come all from the same ethnic background, because if they did, they would all look alike more or less the same as we would judge the Chineses or Koreans just to mention two groups.
How they got together united in a single religious belief that's another question! I really would like to learn about it. I believe that because of their "non-European" faith, many people think that they may not be White.
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