Discussion: When and why did Jews come to be seen as a race and not just a religion?

For the bulk of ye oldie history, Jews were mostly seen as a religion. If a jew converted to christianity, then they ceased to be a jew. But at some point, perhaps the early modern period, there came a viewpoint that jews who converted to other religions were still jewish and thus persecuted for it. Leading to the situation of today.

Why did this happen? And how?

And was exclusively a European/western phenomenon? In the islamic world as far as I'm aware, the view of jews as a race wasnt nearly as much of a thing. There are people from there I know who were indeed very confused upon discovering the concept of irreligious jews.
 
For the bulk of ye oldie history, Jews were mostly seen as a religion. If a jew converted to christianity, then they ceased to be a jew. But at some point, perhaps the early modern period, there came a viewpoint that jews who converted to other religions were still jewish and thus persecuted for it. Leading to the situation of today.

Why did this happen? And how?

And was exclusively a European/western phenomenon? In the islamic world as far as I'm aware, the view of jews as a race wasnt nearly as much of a thing. There are people from there I know who were indeed very confused upon discovering the concept of irreligious jews.

We Jews have always referred to ourselves as "a nation", but the idea of Jews as a "race" developed with nineteenth century European scientific racism. The term "antisemitism" was coined by Europeans to make their hatred of Jews seem scientific and rational.
 
We Jews have always referred to ourselves as "a nation", but the idea of Jews as a "race" developed with nineteenth century European scientific racism. The term "antisemitism" was coined by Europeans to make their hatred of Jews seem scientific and rational.
According to most interpretations of Halacha though, isn't someone who converts away from Judaism still considered a Jew?
 
I think the basis is Spain's proto-racist 'limpieza de sangre' ideology which developed in sixteenth century. Then you have the marriage made in Hell between comparative historical linguistics and racial anthropology celebrated by the likes of Ernest Renan in the nineteeth century, after a long and complex engagement, and consummated in later Völkisch German and French far-right milieus, mostly.
 
The point is of course that at first, Jews were both a faith and a 'nation' because faith used to be a huge part of what made a nation and, conversely, people tended to be seen as BORN in the faith of their 'nation'. Modern nationalism changed that sometimes but as a minority everywhere Judaism tended to cling to the older approach. I know that's a lot more varied and nuanced than that, but just to give the broad strokes.
 
For the bulk of ye oldie history, Jews were mostly seen as a religion. If a jew converted to christianity, then they ceased to be a jew. But at some point, perhaps the early modern period, there came a viewpoint that jews who converted to other religions were still jewish and thus persecuted for it. Leading to the situation of today.

Why did this happen? And how?

And was exclusively a European/western phenomenon? In the islamic world as far as I'm aware, the view of jews as a race wasnt nearly as much of a thing. There are people from there I know who were indeed very confused upon discovering the concept of irreligious jews.
Apostate Jews are still Jews. What are you talking about?
 
I think the basis is Spain's proto-racist 'limpieza de sangre' ideology which developed in sixteenth century. Then you have the marriage made in Hell between comparative historical linguistics and racial anthropology celebrated by the likes of Ernest Renan in the nineteeth century, after a long and complex engagement, and consummated in later Völkisch German and French far-right milieus, mostly.
Agreed. Voltaire's antisemitism also played a role IMHO, particularly in the French case as a bridge between anti-Judaism and antisemitism.
 
At about the same time as the concept of "race" (and with it, "nationality") itself came into existence - that is, in such complex and varied ways across time and space that you can't pinpoint any year, or even century, between 380 A.D. and 1933 that the transition occurred. Yes, the proto-racialist limpieza de sangre in Spain had a huge impact on Jews living there, but it's not like all of Europe suddenly came to appreciate this new definition of humanity that the Spanish crown invented. And even limpieza de sangre was only proto-racialist; it was a discriminatory policy directed against two specific minorities, not a universal system of classification like the 19th- and 20th-century racialists (or, for that matter, 21st-century censuses) drew up. I don't really buy the argument that limpieza de sangre was an ideology, in the way we'd understand it today, or even a particularly clear precursor to it.

Actually, I'd say that the idea that Judaism is "just a religion" is about as new as the idea that it's a race. Medieval economics, especially the relationship between the town and countryside, encouraged the segregation of Jews as an urban caste; that system started to break down in the Early Modern era, which brought back serious ideas of mass conversion, as opposed to occasional pogroms or explusions. Consider the case of Martin Luther: in the earliest years of the Reformation, he naïvely thought that Jews would convert to the purified Christianity he'd set about making, and so had (for his time) relatively liberal attitudes toward them. At that time, he condemned discrimination against them as an impediment to their conversion. When they failed to convert - no surprise - he turned into the vicious anti-Semite of On the Jews and their Lies. But he never gave up on the idea of conversion, leading to this bizarre paragraph:

Yet, we will show them Christian love and pray for them that they may be converted to receive the Lord, whom they should honor properly before us. Whoever will not do this is no doubt a malicious Jew [!], who will not stop blaspheming Christ, draining you dry, and, if he can, killing you.

Well, it seems bizarre to us today, but it makes sense if you consider Luther's entire worldview as a spiritual revolutionary. The idea that "Jews are Jews, nothing to be done about it" can be interpreted either as racialism, or as part of the medieval *caste system; but you can only conflate the two with regard to a third alternative, that every human being has an equivalent individual soul regardless of ethnicity and economic role. That's an invention of early modernity - expressed in Germany as Protestantism, but filtering gradually through all of Europe - just as much as racialism is. It's even more interesting, and more historically accurate, to see racialism and humanism as the two sides of the modern coin, but that's a lot to discuss.
 
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How does that work? If a muslim or a christian leaves his faith he isnt a chritstian or muslim anymore. I guess its differnt in judaism?
We aren't a religion, or a nation, we are a family. Our culture is completely different. They just aren't good Jews. One cannot stop being a Jew. Just like your brother cannot cease to be your brother.
 
We aren't a religion, or a nation, we are a family. Our culture is completely different. They just aren't good Jews. One cannot stop being a Jew. Just like your brother cannot cease to be your brother.
This is also formally the case with Catholicism (in the Pope's eyes, at least, I will never not be a Catholic). What's remarkable, I think, is not so much irrevocability - which was the default position in Europe prior to the Reformation - but the historical process that led to religion being revocable in the first place.
 

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They were historically seen as a "Nation/ethnic group" long before they were identified as a religious going back at least to the later Bronze Age, perhaps earlier. While the religious aspect and actual dating involved in the start of the "Biblical" Israeli is very much an open question, and likely always will be, there are scientific markers that indicate a "tribal" aspect going back at least 4,000 years.
 
How did the islamic world view jews then, if in europe they always had a sort of tribal aspect to them? From my understanding, race was never that important among muslims and anyone who converted was theoretically equal.
 
They were historically seen as a "Nation/ethnic group" long before they were identified as a religious going back at least to the later Bronze Age, perhaps earlier. While the religious aspect and actual dating involved in the start of the "Biblical" Israeli is very much an open question, and likely always will be, there are scientific markers that indicate a "tribal" aspect going back at least 4,000 years.
True, in a sense, but arguments from continuity are always a little flat. The gaps between the Shasu of YHW, Jesus' followers and opponents, Luther's Jews, and the State of Israel's predominant ethnoreligious group are so immense that, to answer any historical question like this, you have to start somewhere. In practice, a question like this isn't "when did the Jews form as a group?" but rather "when did the Jews become the group that we define them as today?" - and that begins, not in the Bronze Age, but in the Early Modern period.

To put it another way, you could say we're discussing the ethnoreligious category that Jews (among others) occupy, not the Jews who happen to occupy it.
 
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How did the islamic world view jews then, if in europe they always had a sort of tribal aspect to them? From my understanding, race was never that important among muslims and anyone who converted was theoretically equal.

Just because they believed in equality of all Muslims doesn't mean they were ethnicity-blind. Membership of different tribes is very conscious in early Islam.
 
For the bulk of ye oldie history, Jews were mostly seen as a religion. If a jew converted to christianity, then they ceased to be a jew. But at some point, perhaps the early modern period, there came a viewpoint that jews who converted to other religions were still jewish and thus persecuted for it. Leading to the situation of today.

Why did this happen? And how?

And was exclusively a European/western phenomenon? In the islamic world as far as I'm aware, the view of jews as a race wasnt nearly as much of a thing. There are people from there I know who were indeed very confused upon discovering the concept of irreligious jews.

"I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God."
- Exodus 6:7
 
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