Judaism isn't a race or even a particular culture or ethnic group. You can meet blond Jews, Middle-Eastern Jews, Asian Jews, Black Jews, Latino Jews, Jews who look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jews who look like Britney Spears. About 13 or 14 million Jews are spread around the world, including about 6 million in the United States and about 5 million in Israel — so Judaism obviously isn't "a nation." Moreover, many Jews don't believe in God or practice Jewish observances, so being Jewish doesn't necessarily have anything to do with religion.
 | So what does it mean to be Jewish? Take a look at the basics: |
- Being Jewish (being "a Jew") means you're a Member of the Tribe (an M-O-T). The tribe started with a couple named Abraham and Sarah about 4,000 years ago, it grew over time, and it's still here today. You can become part of the Jewish tribe in two ways: By being born to a Jewish mother or by joining through a series of rituals (called converting).
- Judaism is a set of beliefs, practices, and ethics based on the Torah. You can practice Judaism and not be Jewish, and you can be a Jew and not practice Judaism.
What's in a name?
The word Jewish doesn't appear in the Bible at all. For example, the folks who came out of slavery in Egypt in the Book of Exodus were called "Hebrews" or "Children of Israel," and they each belonged to one of the 12 tribes of Israel. The Assyrians dispersed 10 of the 12 tribes in the 8th century B.C.E. (Before Common Era), but the tribe of Judah and the smaller tribe of Benjamin remained as the Southern Kingdom known as Judea.
 | When Judea fell to the Babylonians and the people were taken into exile, they became known as the Judah-ites (Yehudim), because they were the people of Judah (Yehudah). In Hebrew, the name Yehudim persists today and simply means "Jews." The religion they practiced was later called "Judah-ism" — which became "Judaism." The preferred pronunciation is "Judah-ism" rather than "Jude-ism" or "Judy-ism" — unless you're talking about Judy Garland. |
Jews far and wide
The Jewish people have always tended to fan out across the known world. Evidence shows that even centuries before Jesus, there were Jewish communities along the North African and East African coasts, in Europe, and throughout Asia. Jews were among the first people to come to the Americas from Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Some evidence suggests that there was at least one Jew aboard the ship with Columbus (and some people suspect that Columbus himself was a Jew).
Everywhere the Jews went, they grew through intermarriage and converts, and — most importantly — they kept their basic religion while adopting the culture and norms of the local area. That's why up to 20 percent of Jews descended from European ancestors have blue eyes, and why some Jews are Black, Hispanic, or Asian. It's also why a Jew from New York looks different and acts differently than a Jew from Bombay, but each one could probably fumble along with most of the others' Shabbat service.
Similarly, Jewish food, music, and humor from Iraq and Yemen is much more Arabic in nature than the Spanish flavor of Jews from Brazil and Argentina, which is different than the borscht soup and klezmer music of Jews from Europe. They all even speak Hebrew with different dialects! Jews just don't fit any set of stereotypes or expectations.
| Yet, all Jews are inextricably linked together simply by being Jewish. Perhaps it's a common practice and belief in Judaism; perhaps it's a common sense of history, or a shared sense of being an outsider from the broader culture. Or perhaps it's a deep, innate feeling of connection to the tribe. |
Two major groups
Jews have long spread out to the corners of the world, so there are significant Jewish communities (of more than 100,000 people each) in France, Australia, Argentina, and South Africa. In North America, most people think all the Jews live in big cities like New York (where there are 1.75 million Jews). However, many also live in the "Wild West" states like Wyoming, the Deep South states like Louisiana, and everywhere in-between.
In fact, not only are there far more Jewish people living outside of Israel than within today, it has been this way for more than 2,500 years. However, most Jews today identify with one of two groups: Ashkenazi and Sephardi.
Ashkenazi
The descendants of Jews who, until around 1900, lived anywhere from northwest Europe (like France and Germany) to Eastern Europe (like Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania) are usually called Ashkenazi (ahsh-ke-NAH-zee; plural Ashkenazim). The majority of Jews in the world are Ashkenazi.
Sephardi
The descendants of Jews who lived in Spain up until the fifteenth century are called Sephardi (seh-FAR-dee; plural Sephardim). After the expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century, these Jews traveled to North Africa, Italy, the Ottoman Empire (Turkey), and back to the Middle East. Of course, many Jews started out in those areas (never having traveled as far as Spain to begin with), but they're generally called Sephardi anyway. You also hear Jews from the Middle East called Mizrachi ("from the East;" Hebrew has no "ch" sound, so this is the guttural "kha" sound).
Over the past 500 years, the Sephardim primarily interacted with Muslims, especially African and Arab Muslims. Today much of their culture (music, language, liturgical melodies, food, festival customs, and so on) is based on those cultures. The Ashkenazim, on the other hand, mostly interacted with European Christian cultures, resulting in a very different ethnic feeling.
A mosaic of beliefs and practices
Judaism may be a set of beliefs and practices, but here are many different sets of beliefs and practices! In some ways, you can see Judaism as a tree with many branches; there's a common trunk and root system, but each sect or denomination is off on its own branch, and in many cases, each synagogue is on its own little twig.
| Most Jews see the biggest branches of the tree as Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Non-Religious — plus, they may add a few others, like Reconstructionist, Renewal, and Secular Humanistic. On the other hand, some traditional Orthodox Jews see it differently: To them, Orthodoxy is the whole tree and what everyone else is doing is something else — maybe a whole other tree, but certainly not practicing Judaism. |
The basic difference between the groups is that while the Orthodox believe that the Torah (both written and oral) was literally given by God to Moses, word for word, more liberal Jews tend to believe that the Torah and halachah (Jewish law) may have been Divinely inspired, but were translated by humans influenced by their own time and place. With this in mind, liberal Jews hold on to elements that feel like Truth, principles that intellectually are affirmed as Truth, and search for those other pieces that need to evolve.
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