Jewish Identity and Ethnicity

Jewish identity is multifaceted. In the story of the prophet Jonah, for example, he was asked by the frightened crew of the ship bound for Tarshish (possibly Spain) who he was. He responded that he was a Hebrew as well as a God-fearing man. For Jonah, there was both an ethnic component and a religious or theological component to his identity. The focus of this post will be on the question of ethnicity. Ethnicity is not the same as race. This is a common misconception that many people make.

Ethnic groups share a sense of common origins and history, common cultural traditions, a common language, and other shared characteristics. Perhaps the best example of the diversity that can exist within a single ethnic group is that of Hispanics.

The word Hispanic, derived from Hispania (or Spania), the name for Spain used by the Romans and later the Byzantine Empire, in reality encompasses many different racial groups and national backgrounds. It includes individuals of African ancestry, those of predominantly Spanish ancestry (who themselves are descended from a mixture of Iberian peoples, Romans, Visigoths, and others), Indigenous peoples of the Americas, and individuals of mixed Spanish, Indigenous American, and African ancestry in countless combinations.

What these groups hold in common are the Spanish language and culture and, regardless of their specific origins, some historical connection to the Spanish colonization of the New World.

Interestingly, the Spanish and Portuguese Conversos who fled to Amsterdam, Hamburg, London, the Caribbean, and elsewhere usually referred to themselves as members of “the Nation.” Membership in the Nation was often regarded as stronger than purely religious bonds. Thus, Conversos who had returned openly to Judaism frequently sought to marry Conversos who had not yet openly returned to Judaism rather than marry Ashkenazim. The expectation was that these Conversos would eventually embrace the public practice of Judaism, but this preference nevertheless illustrates the importance they placed on preserving what they understood to be their collective identity. I will expand on this point, and on how Portuguese identity fits into it, in a subsequent post.

This is not to say that religious observance was unimportant. The rabbis of Amsterdam, such as Rabbi Saul Levi Morteira, were particularly cognizant of this issue and frequently admonished the Conversos to live as observant Jews in the religious freedom that Amsterdam afforded them.

This emphasis on nationhood or peoplehood is perhaps not surprising if we consider a general distinction between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.

In a lecture many years ago, Rabbi Byron L. Sherwin, of blessed memory, suggested that Sephardim have generally regarded themselves first and foremost as a nation or people. The unity and preservation of the nation were, in his view, paramount. According to Rabbi Sherwin, this helps explain why the religious denominations that developed among Ashkenazim—Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and others—did not emerge among Sephardim in the same way.

In effect, there is only Orthodox Judaism within the traditional Sephardic world, regardless of an individual’s personal level of observance. Thus, a particular Sephardic Jew might not be personally observant, yet when he or she chooses to attend synagogue, it would ordinarily be an Orthodox one. By contrast, Rabbi Sherwin suggested that Ashkenazim tended to place greater emphasis on religious identity as the primary marker of Jewish belonging. As a result, the environment proved more conducive to the development of pronounced denominational divisions. The idea of a nation among Sephardim perhaps explains why Sephardic synagogues are generally the place for Jews at all levels of religious observance.