My hot take: the characterization of Judaism as a religion like Christianity or Islam (rather than an ethnogroup) has caused the Jewish community more harm than good. (Thread)

This claim is used by antizionists all the time to validate that Jews aren’t a people but simply a religion. Just like how Argentinian Christians and American Christians have completely different histories and lives,

People believe Jews from around the world have nothing in common, when that isn’t true. We have a common language, common foods, common spiritual beliefs, a common connection to a higher power, and more. Jews are a people and Judaism is an ethnicity.

One cannot be a Christian atheist or a Muslim atheist, as soon as you stop believing in Allah or Jesus you cease to be a Muslim or a Christian. This is not true of Judaism though, as you can be a culturally or ethnically Jewish atheist.

Genetically, Jews are more similar to other Jews than to people we lived alongside in diaspora. Ashkenazim can have 50% Levantine genetics. Certain conditions are also more prevalent amongst Jewish people, like Tay Sachs Disease amongst Ashkenazim.

By allowing those facts to be ignored and by subscribing to the western belief that Judaism is just a religion, it leads to incredible bastardization of Jewish history, such as the belief that if it was all bad, Jews could simply convert religion and be okay.

Jews were seldom hated because of religious beliefs, it was more common that our hatred was racial, because we’re ethnically different and “not true” citizens of whatever country we live in. There is no escaping hatred when it is racial rather than religious.

In the US in the early to mid 20th century, neighborhoods were segregated against Jews and colleges had limits on the number of Jews they could admit. Jews started their own hospitals because nobody wanted Jewish doctors during this period.

If Judaism is just a religion, would it not make sense for Jews to simply convert out in order to avoid this discriminations? Wouldn’t it make sense for a Jewish student to convert to Christianity to get into university?

The answer is that this was not possible, once a Jew always a Jew. It is a VERY recent idea that Judaism is simply a religion, like Islam or Christianity, and this talking point is used to belittle our history and our hardships, which there was no escaping.