Why is Judaism the gang you cannot leave?

According to Jewish law, when a Jew converts to another religion they remain Jewish. A non-Jew can convert to Judaism, but can then never stop being Jewish. Once established, Jewish status is considered permanent. This post explores how this asymmetry is justified and explained in the Jewish religious texts.

At the heart of this matter lies the belief in Jewish and non-Jewish souls. The Cabbalah teaches that Jews who do not believe in the Jewish religion are still seen as Jewish as they have Jewish souls - they have simply gone astray. A non-Jew who converts to Judaism is seen as a Jewish soul born into a non-Jewish body; by converting they are reconciling their body with their soul’s true nature. Israel Shahak, in his book “Jewish Fundamenatalism in Israel”, writes:

One of the basic tenants of the Lurianic Cabbala is the absolute superiority of the Jewish soul and body over the non-Jewish soul and body…

Rabbi Kook, the Elder, the revered father of the messianic tendency of Jewish fundamentalism, said “The difference between a Jewish soul and souls of non-Jews – all of them in all different levels – is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the souls of cattle.”

This extreme racism explains why religious Zionists have no compassion for Palestinian suffering - they literally see the Palestinians as closer to animals than themselves. It also explains why religious Zionists have no problem collaborating with secular Zionists - in their view it is the secular Jew’s soul that makes the Jewish, not their belief. Indeed, religious Zionists are taught that they are a “collective Messiah” who should “ride upon these (secular) Jews….to exploit them for material gains and… redeem them.” (Shahak: 66)

While the above analysis clarifies why religious Jews see secular Jews as Jewish, it does not explain why secular Jews themselves do so. After all, they do not believe in God, let alone the mystical musings of medieval rabbis! This is a complex but essential topic to explore, especially as the secular Jewish identity is central to the success of the Zionist colonial project. Let’s unravel the various strands that have been woven together to create the secular Jewish identity.

If you ask a secular Jew to explain what makes them Jewish they’ll probably cite lineage and culture. Neither of these, however, stands up to scrutiny: European Jewish DNA contains far fewer genes of ancient Israelites than those of Palestinians (ref), and Jewish culture is essentially the culture of the countries they reside in. Ultimately, they will fall back on anti-semitism, saying “What choice do we have? Hitler didn’t care if we were religious when he exterminated us.”

This reliance on antisemitism seems strange at first - why would you allow those who hate you to define your identity? When analysed in context of the teachings of the Cabbala outlined above, however, it starts to make more sense: both the Cabbala and the Nazis see Jews as fundamentally different from other humans. By identifying as Jewish, secular Jews are actually in agreement not only with the antisemites, but also with the racist religious Zionists.

Secular Jews will, of course, deny they are influenced by Judaism as a religion. But the fact that they cannot provide any clear, positive reasons for identifying as Jewish indicates they haven’t thought through the issue clearly. Indeed, there is a huge taboo within the Jewish community against doing so. Jews are allowed and encouraged to intellectually criticise and deconstruct everything including the religion itself - but to question whether they are Jewish is unacceptable. Jews who do so are simply labelled ‘self-hating’.

The roots of this taboo against renouncing the Jewish identity lie in Jewish history. Before the modern era, the concept of being a secular Jew didn’t exist. Medieval Jewish community structure, economic life, family relationships, and personal identity were so thoroughly integrated with religious practice that rejecting one essentially meant rejecting all. The only way to stop being a religious Jew was to adopt another religion and religious community. Apostates would be ostracised and punished severely, but never pronounced non-Jews - they were seen as wicked and sinful, but still Jewish, whatever religion they professed to believe in. This gave rise to an environment wherein an individuals personal belief was less important than identity and conformity. As modernity approached, secularism within the Jewish community became increasingly tolerated, as long it was not accompanied by a rejection of the Jewish identity and community. This gave rise eventually to the current situation, where it is very common to find secular Jews taking part in religious Jewish ceremonies purely to be part of the family or community, even though they have no belief or even interest in the religious rituals themselves. Indeed, belief in God is explicitly stated as not beinga requirement to be a member of Reform Jewish synagogues.

Despite the deep-rooted nature of the secular Jewish identity, it is probable that it would have eventually died out as secular Jews often marry non-Jews and then familiies that have very little to do with the Jewish community. The advent of Zionism, however, gave the secular Jewish identity a new lease of life. Zionism synthesises religious and secular Judaism through the concept of Jews as a people returning to their land. By actualising this return and creating the modern Hebrew language it gave a physical reality to the idea of Judaism as a race, rather than a religion. Zionism created not only Israel, but the Israeli, a topic we will explore in another post.