Judaism Response Paper I

As the oldest monotheistic religion, spanning thousands of years, Judaism is hard to classify: is it a culture, a religion, a race, or all three? I believe that Judaism is both a culture and a religion, but I do not believe in today’s world it is a race. Judaism is, primarily, a religion and with religion comes culture. Culture can be defined as a set of common values and beliefs held by a certain group of people. When Abraham made the covenant with YHWH, and Moses wrote down the Ten Commandments a culture was born. The Ten Commandments mandate a set of values the Jewish people should abide by and the covenant between Abraham and YHWH requires all of Abraham’s descendants, the Jews, to be solely devoted to YHWH and to be circumcised. Therefore providing the set of values and beliefs that are necessary to define a culture.
At one time in history Judaism was, indeed, a race. In the covenant between Abraham and YHWH, God told Abraham that he and his descendents, the Jews, would be the chosen ones and when the world was more contained and Judaism was held in one general region, Judaism did pertain to a single race. In today’s world, however, there are many different people of different races that can be described as Jewish: if a Jewish woman bears a girl by an Asian man and that girl goes on to have daughters with another Asian man, and those daughters have daughters, and so on these girls are technically Jewish but are physically Asian, therefore it is difficult to describe Judaism as a race.