Jeremy Rosen
Who is a Jew?
Summary
Despite over 3,000 years of history, many still struggle to define what exactly makes someone a Jew. In this lecture Jeremy Rosen offers his take on what it means to be a Jew and whether or not someone can be culturally Jewish without a religious practice behind it.
Jeremy Rosen
Manchester-born Jeremy Rosen was educated at Cambridge University England and Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. He has practiced as an orthodox rabbi, as principal of Carmel College in the UK, and as professor at the Faculty for Comparative Religion in Antwerp, Belgium. He has written and lectured extensively in the UK and the US, where he now resides and was the rabbi of the Persian-Jewish community in Manhattan.
Yes, cultural Judaism is a very important feature of the Jewish world. It’s a religion, it’s a definition which says, look, I’m not religious. I don’t believe in God or religious behaviour, I’m totally secular, but I love Jewish history, I love Jewish culture. I think Woody Allen is very Jewish, I think Roth was very Jewish, they’re Jewish to me, I’m Jewish to them. This is part of who I am. It’s made more clear when I see how much anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism is around. But it is a version of Judaism that wants to avoid the religious side, which, as far as I’m concerned, is fine. If that’s what you are happy with, I welcome you. So, that’s cultural Judaism.
I would define a Jew as somebody who’s committed to the survival of the Jewish people. And some, I don’t care how religious they are, if they’re not committed to the survival of Jewish people, for me, I don’t count ‘em as Jewish. I don’t care what denomination they’re in. To me, that is what defines a Jew. Now, your commitment could be a historical commitment, it could be a social commitment, it could be a historical commitment, but commitment to the survival of the Jewish people, to me, that is absolutely definitive.
Yes, I believe you can, but I also believe it depends on who you ask. There are some very religious people who will say no, without the religion, there’s no Judaism. But I don’t belong to that way of thinking.