Can Leftists On The Internet Please Stop Suggesting Judaism Is Just A Religion, Or Just A Racial Group?

Can leftists on the internet please stop suggesting Judaism is just a religion, or just a racial group?

It literally predates modern conceptions of both religion and race. ‘Religion’ as commonly understood in the West is largely an outgrowth of the Reformation, followed by the Enlightenment, which saw a change in the meaning of ‘belief’ to ‘intellectual agreement with a set of doctrines’, and developed an understanding of ‘religion’ that primarily centers around doctrinal commitments. When applied to non-western ‘religions’ (and, to a degree, when applied to non-Protestant christianities) this conception often forces a mold that does not fit the thing in question (in this case, that thing being Judaism).

Judaism also crosses modern conceptions of racial and ethnic lines, because Jews have lived in a very widespread array of regions, usually had some level of intertwining with local populations, and developed unique Jewish cultures in various diaspora communities.

Imposing the concept of ‘religion’ onto Judaism, imposing the concept of ‘race’ onto Judaism, is to disregard much of Judaism to make it fit with categories that are foreign to it.

Mordecai Kaplan was right: Judaism is a civilization. Daniel Boyarin was right: Judaism is a people. It cannot be reduced to the category of religion, nor of race, nor purely of ethnicity in a straightforward sense.

The Strand magazine, August 1899

Nehamah Lifshitz performing in Kaltowa, Lithuania, 1949

Nehama Lifshitz (1927 – 2017), often called “the Jewish Nightingale”, was a world-renowned Yiddish folk singer from Kaunas, Lithuania. She survived the Holocaust by fleeing east to Uzbekistan and returned to Kaunas after the war. Performing all over Eastern Europe and Central Asia, her concerts were the heart and soul of Lifshitz’s contribution to keeping Jewish culture and identity alive in the repressive Communist bloc. As a result, she encountered frequent hostility from Soviet officials, who deemed her art as "nationalistic", "pessimistic" and "unsociacialistic".

Circleville, Ohio, USA 1968 pumpkin queen contest. The contest started in 1902, and shown in the photos is miss Peggy Mayo, the pumpkin queen.

Source: Miss Pumpkin Queen photographs - Ohio History Connection Selections - (ohiomemory.org)

Fancy dress inspired by Austrian folk costume

c. 1880

House of Worth, Coutau-Bégarie

there should be plushies of the strange but endearing creatures that live in medieval texts margins