Within the problem of racism and discrimination, the Jewish people occupies a special place in history. The origins of the Jewish people are vague. While the outward and cultural differences are great, all Jews are bound by faith and its associated traditional customs. All that is not biology. It argues in favor of defining Jewish identity as a cultural and religious fact, and not as a racial, ethnic one.
Within the problem of racism and discrimination, the Jewish people occupies a special place in history. The origins of the Jewish people, named after the later tribe of Judah, are vague. There are indications that the Jews already lived in Palestine more than three thousand years ago, where their monotheistic religion developed in the second half of the last millennium BC. Their diaspora (spreading the rest of the world) began with the exodus to Babylon, after the unverifiable destruction of their First Temple in 586 BC.
Also as a trading people the Jews spread all over the Hellinistic world. In the year 70, after the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans, the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem withdrew in all directions, although a part remained in Palestine.
Pure descent
At the time, Jews were zealous to keep their own people "spotless," says the Bible book of Ezra. When 50,000 Jewish exiles returned to their homeland after the conquest of Babylonia in 538 BC, they chose to send their alien wives and their half-blood children away to purify the tribe. This fact has also been historically verified. The fact that all descended from the diaspora is supported by DNA research into a genetic marker that is passed on via the paternal line, i.e. via the Y chromosome:the Cohen Modal Haplotype. This is located in a so-called non-coding region of the Y chromosome.
It would now be passed on to the Jewish priestly caste, i.e. to all male Cohens, for more than 3,300 years. All are descendants of the first high priest or "Koheen," Aaron, the elder brother of Moses. This was before the separation of the later Sephards and Ashkenazes. The haplotype now appears to occur in more than 80% of the current 'Kohanim', as the descendants of Aaron are called.
Comments were also made on this alleged pure descent. After all, there is a great variety in appearance, from blond and blue-eyed to very dark Ethiopian Jews. This great ethnic diversity can be explained, in addition to marriages with non-Jews, by massive transitions to Judaism during the Roman Empire around the beginning of our era, until the Roman emperor Constantine the Great forbade this. Jews are also said to have descended from the elite of the then powerful Turkish steppe people, the Khazars, who converted in the eighth century.
Peaceful coexistence
In the Nazis' elimination of Jews, racial ideology and anti-Semitism mixed up. Expressions of anti-Semitism have been around since ancient times. Jews were economically disadvantaged, allowed to own limited land, could not join guilds, had to live in ghettos, and were punished more severely than others for wrongdoing. Christians accused the Jews of having Jesus Christ crucified. At the end of his life Luther also turned against the Jews.
Because it was forbidden for Christians to charge interest, Jews acted as financiers. They got rich because of that, which caused jealousy. Furthermore, during major epidemics, such as the plague, Jews were often spared death. Rationally speaking, this was due to their strict purification laws, but the Christians attributed it to a pact with the devil.
After centuries of peaceful coexistence, the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and later from Portugal. The mostly wealthy Sephards traveled via Antwerp to Amsterdam, where they contrasted colorfully with the sober Calvinists. When Russian Tsars organized violent pogroms at the beginning of the seventeenth century, mostly poor Ashkenazi Jews from Central and Eastern Europe also moved to our tolerant Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.
Here, Jews have never lived in ghettos, as they did elsewhere. Rembrandt lived in Amsterdam for some time among the Jews. His painting The Jewish Bride dates from that time. The Jews were free to profess their faith here. Synagogues arose in several places. A total of 230 Jewish cemeteries were also established.
Civil rights
In the nineteenth century, the Nazis added an alleged “biological” motivation to the already existing anti-Semitism. They thereby declared the Jews a parasitic race. Jews had previously been forced to wear a distinctive sign, such as the Jewish hat in the Middle Ages and the yellow Jewish ring on clothing from the fifteenth century onwards. During the Nazi era, the yellow Star of David became mandatory.
The Nuremberg Laws stripped the Jews of their civil rights, with a long list of indications as to who was Jewish. In doing so, the rabbinical maternal lineage was not maintained. According to Jewish-religious law, a person is only Jewish if the mother is Jewish. While the 'father Jews' for the Orthodox are not Jews, they suffered just as hard from the Holocaust due to the extensive Nuremberg Laws.
The controversy over the parentage continues. The desire to be able to count back to the diaspora clashes with scientific objectivity. While the outward and cultural differences are great, all Jews are bound by faith and its associated traditional customs. There are, for example, the separate areas for men and women in the synagogue, the circumcision of newborn boys (Ethiopian Jews also circumcise the girls) and the dietary laws from the Torah about kosher food, with regulations about what can and cannot be eaten. There are also strict rules for separate kitchen utensils for milk and meat.
The strict Orthodox Jews have additional rules, such as shaving a newly married woman on her bridal night and wearing a wig from now on. All that is not biology. It argues in favor of defining Jewish identity as a cultural and religious fact, and not as a racial, ethnic one.