I'm among those who say that I'm Jewish but not because of my religion. Since that particular religion didn't speak to me, I converted decades ago. But then I found out I'm Jewish because of my heartfelt connection to Israel and the Jewish people.
The path to Jewish citizenship in 18th-century Europe was defined by a single, sharp condition, captured in Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre's 1789 declaration to the French National Assembly: "To the Jews as a nation, nothing; to the Jews as individuals, everything." Citizenship was on offer, but only at a price — the dissolution of Jewish peoplehood.
The idea of Judaism as "merely a religion" was itself a European invention of this period. Jews had long understood themselves as a nation: a people with their own laws, communal institutions, and collective identity, not simply a group of individuals who shared certain beliefs. But the emerging nation-states of the Enlightenment had no place for a people within a people. To become a citizen, a Jew had to relinquish that national identity and re-emerge as something the state could recognize: an individual who happened to practice a private religion called Judaism.
In other words, emancipation was conditional on self-erasure. One could not enter the ruler's world as a Jew belonging to the Jewish people — only as an individual adherent of a faith, stripped of the communal and national character that had defined Jewish life for centuries.
The American Echo
Some observers argue that a version of this bargain persists in the United States today — but with a distinctive twist: it is often internalized and voiced by Jews themselves, not just imposed from outside. In a civic culture shaped by the separation of church and state and a general discomfort with ethnic or national loyalties that might complicate national belonging, many American Jews have found it safer, and more comfortable, to describe their Jewishness as a religion — something practiced privately, on weekends, at synagogue — rather than as membership in a people with a shared history, land, and collective fate tied to Jews elsewhere in the world.
On this view, when American Jews say "I'm Jewish, but that's just my religion, I'm not part of some nation," they are echoing Clermont-Tonnerre's formula from the inside. It becomes a kind of pre-emptive reassurance, offered to a surrounding society that has made clear the terms of full acceptance: individuals, yes; a people, more warily. The framing lets Jewish identity fit neatly into the American model of religious pluralism — one faith among many — while sidestepping the more difficult, and more historically accurate, claim to peoplehood.
There is an entire generation of people born Jewish who also lack that understanding of Jewish people hood. It’s quite sad. It’s a terrible failure of the parents and perhaps parents of parents. Many of these people are antizionists, and it would not surprise me if they are the last in their family to call themselves Jewish.
Jews have always been a people small in number, which has made them vulnerable. At the same time this is an enormous strength because it enables the sense of peoplehood, of being a family. And I wonder if this is not something that irks some people, including those Jews who feel somewhat alienated from their Jewishness, possibly even leading to jealousy.
In general I think non-Jews find it hard to understand who the Jews are, Judaism being unique as both a religion and a people, yet encompassing those who have no religious belief and/or observance. Perhaps this is one reason why conspiracy theories about Jews proliferate.
To this I would add that Israel is both the past and the future of the Jewish people. It is where we came from but, given current demographic trends, it is also where we are heading. Unlike the Jewish communities outside of Israel, the birth rate in Israel is solidly positive. In a generation or two the Jewish population of places like the US and Europe will have contracted significantly. The opposite will be true in Israel.
There are many Jews who see being Jewish as something very distinct from Israel. Who are you to tell them they're not Jewish (or Jewish enough) as a result?
The Jewish Bible (the one Jewish Jesus preached from), and God, make it clear that the Jews and Israel are one and the same, and they are commanded by God to live on the land and make it blossom. And YOU, Michael, are the last person on substack who should even comment about ANYTHING about the Jews. It's like Tucker Carlson trying to tell Jews what they are and what to believe. Typical obsessed haters. Jews don't tell Christians --or any religion--what to believe and lecture them. You aren't a Jew, sit this one out.
I'm among those who say that I'm Jewish but not because of my religion. Since that particular religion didn't speak to me, I converted decades ago. But then I found out I'm Jewish because of my heartfelt connection to Israel and the Jewish people.
Citizenship on Condition of Self-Erasure
The path to Jewish citizenship in 18th-century Europe was defined by a single, sharp condition, captured in Count Stanislas de Clermont-Tonnerre's 1789 declaration to the French National Assembly: "To the Jews as a nation, nothing; to the Jews as individuals, everything." Citizenship was on offer, but only at a price — the dissolution of Jewish peoplehood.
The idea of Judaism as "merely a religion" was itself a European invention of this period. Jews had long understood themselves as a nation: a people with their own laws, communal institutions, and collective identity, not simply a group of individuals who shared certain beliefs. But the emerging nation-states of the Enlightenment had no place for a people within a people. To become a citizen, a Jew had to relinquish that national identity and re-emerge as something the state could recognize: an individual who happened to practice a private religion called Judaism.
In other words, emancipation was conditional on self-erasure. One could not enter the ruler's world as a Jew belonging to the Jewish people — only as an individual adherent of a faith, stripped of the communal and national character that had defined Jewish life for centuries.
The American Echo
Some observers argue that a version of this bargain persists in the United States today — but with a distinctive twist: it is often internalized and voiced by Jews themselves, not just imposed from outside. In a civic culture shaped by the separation of church and state and a general discomfort with ethnic or national loyalties that might complicate national belonging, many American Jews have found it safer, and more comfortable, to describe their Jewishness as a religion — something practiced privately, on weekends, at synagogue — rather than as membership in a people with a shared history, land, and collective fate tied to Jews elsewhere in the world.
On this view, when American Jews say "I'm Jewish, but that's just my religion, I'm not part of some nation," they are echoing Clermont-Tonnerre's formula from the inside. It becomes a kind of pre-emptive reassurance, offered to a surrounding society that has made clear the terms of full acceptance: individuals, yes; a people, more warily. The framing lets Jewish identity fit neatly into the American model of religious pluralism — one faith among many — while sidestepping the more difficult, and more historically accurate, claim to peoplehood.
But of, course, it doesn't work. Didn't work in Germany, and not working anymore in America.
There is an entire generation of people born Jewish who also lack that understanding of Jewish people hood. It’s quite sad. It’s a terrible failure of the parents and perhaps parents of parents. Many of these people are antizionists, and it would not surprise me if they are the last in their family to call themselves Jewish.
This explains our peoplehood so perfectly. Thank you!
Jews have always been a people small in number, which has made them vulnerable. At the same time this is an enormous strength because it enables the sense of peoplehood, of being a family. And I wonder if this is not something that irks some people, including those Jews who feel somewhat alienated from their Jewishness, possibly even leading to jealousy.
In general I think non-Jews find it hard to understand who the Jews are, Judaism being unique as both a religion and a people, yet encompassing those who have no religious belief and/or observance. Perhaps this is one reason why conspiracy theories about Jews proliferate.
well said!
To this I would add that Israel is both the past and the future of the Jewish people. It is where we came from but, given current demographic trends, it is also where we are heading. Unlike the Jewish communities outside of Israel, the birth rate in Israel is solidly positive. In a generation or two the Jewish population of places like the US and Europe will have contracted significantly. The opposite will be true in Israel.
There are many Jews who see being Jewish as something very distinct from Israel. Who are you to tell them they're not Jewish (or Jewish enough) as a result?
The Jewish Bible (the one Jewish Jesus preached from), and God, make it clear that the Jews and Israel are one and the same, and they are commanded by God to live on the land and make it blossom. And YOU, Michael, are the last person on substack who should even comment about ANYTHING about the Jews. It's like Tucker Carlson trying to tell Jews what they are and what to believe. Typical obsessed haters. Jews don't tell Christians --or any religion--what to believe and lecture them. You aren't a Jew, sit this one out.