Two of my interviewees expressed that Jewish identity consisted of more than religion, but varied in the strength of their convictions. The third, Ellen, was insistent that Judaism was solely religious, but revealed contrasting opinions later on in our interview. In fact, all three described Jewish identity in an unstable manner. By this, I mean that they often expressed a lack of certain knowledge, allowed for other understandings of Jewishness than their own, and seemed stuck between multiple ideas of Jewish identity. Note carefully that I do not mean to say that their understandings of Jewish identity were wrong or somehow bad. Instead, I only seek to highlight that they expressed insecurity and uncertainty about the ways Jewishness exists, following in the well-traveled path of other thinkers who have struggled to define Judaism.1
The most dogmatic understanding of Jewish identity was Ellen's. Numerous times through our interview, she said emphatically that "Judaism is a religion." For Ellen, Judaism is not a "nationality" or "race." Key to her understanding was that there are many different Jews, and that anyone who wanted to could become Jewish. This assertion perhaps harks back to her own search for religious community as an adult: she was able to choose Judaism as much as she could have chosen to be a Quaker or Unitarian Universalist. In particular, she draws a distinction between the categories of 'Jewish American' and 'Asian American.'
I mean, Jewish is a religion. You know, it's not— like if you say Asian Americans, that's different. You know, that's not a religion. Like you have— you have African Jews, you have Spanish Jews, you know, you've got German Jews, you've got Austrian Jews, you've got Jews in Nigeria, you've got Jews in India.
― Ellen, (1:38:55)
Considering the post-World War 2 shift away from racial characterizations of Judaism, Ellen's insistence that Judaism is a religion is unsurprising.2 However, modern day DNA tests throw a wrench into that conception of Judaism by claiming that somehow, our very cells are Jewish. Ellen twice pushed back against the biological conception of Judaism found in DNA tests.
You know, it's— it's not a nationality, even though Ancestry.com [a DNA testing service] says it is, which is weird, I think.
― Ellen, (1:39:21)
Though she said "nationality," more common terms for what tests like Ancestry.com might reveal are (biologized) ethnicity, genetics, and heritage. When genetic tests reveal data like a person's percentage of "Ashkenazi DNA," they traffic in imprecision around what they mean, "sometimes conflating racial, ethnic, national, regional, or continental categories."3 However, in her choice of words, it's possible to discern another possible cause for Ellen's uncomfortability with non-religious understandings of Judaism. A common anti-Semitic trope is dual loyalty: the idea that Jews are loyal to the Jewish nation, whatever that may be, rather than the nations in which they reside. Though genetic material cannot provide any information on nationality, particularly in racially and ethnically diverse places like the United States, Ellen's rejection of DNA tests is seemingly based on worries about what it means for Judaism to be a nationality.
Despite her insistence that Judaism is a religion, Ellen acknowledged that there is something more to Judaism. In some ways, her own identity was like that of the second generation Jews outlined by Herbert Gans, who "could actually envisage no alternatives to being Jewish" and whose "Jewishness was similarly submerged and unconscious, entirely beyond the realm of choice."4 At one point, she said that she had never thought of herself as not Jewish, despite spending a long time without practicing Judaism as a religion. When asked if the fact that her parents were Jewish influenced her Jewish identity, she said that it probably had, although not from the point of view of genetics, descent, or heritage. Instead, she used cultural terms to describe Judaism's attractiveness.
I mean, [Judaism is] a shared set of values and tradition that I always felt was important to keep that thread. Whatever it was.
― Ellen, (1:18:04)
Ellen's conception of a "thread" through time connecting her to previous Jews brings to mind ethnic characterizations rather than strictly religious ones. Later, when asked if Judaism is more than a religion, Ellen compared Jewish Americans to Italian Americans. While she qualified her statement by saying that most religions had cultures attached, she likened the feeling of being in a synagogue or around other Jewish people with the feeling of a Black person at a historically Black college or university. These comparisons suggest that Ellen's view of Judaism as solely a religion is not necessarily absolute. Instead, Judaism for Ellen might include conceptions of community, social life, and culture that transcend bare, Western ideas of religion as belief.
On the other hand, Lara accepted the DNA test logic of Jewishness in the blood. In fact, she drew a comparison between Judaism and other "religions" because of Judaism's ethnic characteristics. Though she oscillates between using the word "nationality" and the word "ethnicity" to describe the complexity she sees in Judaism, she is clear that there is more to Jewish identity than religion.
I also think that being Jewish, there is like a certain complexity to it that there aren't— that there isn't in most other religions that I know of, in that it is both a religion and— and, I— what is it? It's not a nationality? It's not an ethnicity? Is it an ethnicity? Yeah. Eh, I don't know! It's in my blood. (laughing) Like you take the DNA test, it tells you you're Jewish. That's not— doesn't tell you you're Christian. It's like a slightly different thing. So I was— (laughing) I knew I was Jewish without needing to be religiously Jewish.
― Lara, (0:18:57)
However, her belief in so-called "blood logic" is even more clear only a few sentences later.5 To Lara, her Jewish identity is an "absolute" truth while her Jewish religiosity is less well-defined. She said that since her ancestors are Jewish, she is too. According to her, she is Jewish at very least "in the way that" she is Scottish, and she is confident in that identity. In the future, despite her many questions about Judaism as a faith, she hopes to look into what it means to be religiously Jewish.
Curiously, Lara "realized" that she was Jewish in middle school when she realized that she had an identity.
I also don't think that I knew I was Jewish in elementary school. But I knew it in middle school. (laughing) [...] in middle school, you start talking about your identity because you start to realize that you have one, which is a fun and difficult time.
― Lara, (0:04:30)
Unlike Ellen, Lara firmly believes that Judaism is not simply a religion. Gabe agrees with Lara, though his characterizations are somewhat less specific. For Gabe, Judaism is a set of cultural practices along with ethnicity and religion. Shared life experiences make up a large part of what it means to be Jewish for him.
This transcript has been redacted.
― Gabe, (1:34:58)
For Gabe, being Jewish involves being part of "one family tree." He appreciates and enjoys how Judaism involves shared descent, though he does not exclude conversionary Jews from his definition of who is Jewish. In fact, Gabe celebrates the process and ritual of being and becoming a Jew — what you learn and experience is part of Jewish identity for him.
Gabe also evoked a shared ethnic narrative, or a story that helps define a group,6 during a discussion of enrollment quotas, remarking that the "Jewish people" — as a sort of nation or ethnic group — had overcome adversity and discrimination before.
This transcript has been redacted.
― Gabe, (1:56:32)
Lara also deployed ethnic narratives when asked why she felt proud to be Jewish, which she had mentioned. She traced Jews back to the Middle Ages, most likely referencing the period of time when Ashkenazi Jews settled in Europe. She then evoked the "resiliency" of Jews over hundreds of years of discrimination and violence and took pride in "standing the test of time."
Like Lara, Gabe said that there is a religious Judaism in which he partakes less. He also said that he wished he had more access to cultural Judaism, which he identified most with Ashkenazi cultural foods.
Another marker of Judaism for Gabe is informal Jewish community, which neither Lara nor Ellen mentioned. Gabe enjoyed how being Jewish shaped his life even in spaces, like the workplace, that are not specifically Jewish. For instance, he spoke about having Jewish friends at work who would exchange good wishes around Jewish holidays. Rather than Judaism-as-community in a formal sense, such as attending synagogue, Gabe appreciated informal bonds in atypical places.
All three participants responded that they were white when I asked, indicating that they did not think of Judaism as incompatible with whiteness. In fact, Lara went so far as to say that she was the "white version of Jew," both implying the existence of Jews of color and categorically separating her race — white — from Judaism. Gabe perceived his own whiteness not as a part of his identity, but as a constructed label used by society — once again, categorically separate from how he viewed his Jewishness. Though he was seen as white by others, he shared experiences with anti-Semitism that occurred solely because his Judaism was not something that others could always perceive.
In sum, Gabe, Ellen, and Lara described Judaism not as one thing, but as a mixture of many things. Ellen, though insistent on the religious makeup of Jewishness, described it with terms more commonly associated with ethnic belonging. Lara clearly distinguished ethnic Judaism from religious Judaism, claiming each in different ways. Finally, Gabe used ethnic stories, ideas of nationhood and family, and conceptions of religious culture and tradition to describe Judaism as a non-differentiated amalgamation of religion and ethnicity. Their responses map well to Emma Gonzalez-Lesser's ideas about Judaism as a combination of coordinated ideas of race, ethnicity, and religion, which she argues are not as separable as some sociologists have maintained.7 None of the three, despite the language they use, essentialize Judaism into any one thing. It is a complex, hard-to-understand part of each of them.