Recently, Alana Hadid collaborated on an Instagram post that claims Palestinian identity predates Judaism. It would be one thing to try to argue that Palestinian identity as it exists today predates the State of Israel -- something not everyone would agree with -- but Judaism?
If your advocacy for Palestinians requires you to deny, revise, or rewrite Jewish history, that’s not advocacy for Palestinians. That’s antisemitism.
RELIGION IN ANTIQUITY
Let’s put a few concepts into historical context. The concept of religion as it exists today did not exist in the ancient world. In antiquity, national and religious identities were almost one in the same. Think, for example, of the Ancient Egyptians or the Ancient Greeks. Though they both observed their own pantheon of gods and practiced their own traditional religious rituals, when we think of Ancient Egyptians or Ancient Greeks, we don’t think of them as religious groups. In the Middle East, most nations had a “national god;” for example, the Assyrians named themselves after their national god, Ashur.
The difference between Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Greeks and Jews today is that while the Egyptians and Greeks have long ceased practicing their ancient national religions, in favor of religions like Christianity and Islam, Jews today do continue practicing the same religious rituals and rites as our ancient ancestors did.
Just like the Ancient Egyptians made no differentiation between their national and religious identity, Jewish national and religious identity is still deeply intertwined. In fact, there is no word for “religion” in the Hebrew Bible. The closest would be “dat,” meaning law, or “emuna,” meaning belief.
BEFORE JUDAISM: YAHWISM
The precursor to Judaism, Yahwism, dates back to the 12th century BCE. The most significant difference between Yahwism and Judaism is that the Yahwists only followed the Hebrew God -- YHWH -- but did not necessarily reject the rest of the existence of the Canaanite pantheon.
The cult of YHWH was the national cult of the Kingdom of Israel (1047 BCE-930 BCE), though it seems other Canaanite cultures may have worshipped YHWH as well. Interestingly, the Hebrew God as depicted in the Hebrew Bible seems to be an amalgamation of YHWH and El, the most important god in the Canaanite pantheon.
FROM YAHWISM TO JUDAISM
In 930 BCE, the Kingdom of Israel split into two: the Kingdom of Israel to the north, also known as Samaria, and the Kingdom of Judah to the south. The term “Jew” comes from “Judahite,” as in a resident or citizen of the Kingdom of Judah. In Hebrew, the word for “Judahite” and “Jew” is the same, “Yehudi.”
In 587 BCE, the Babylonians conquered the Kingdom of Judah and exiled its educated class to Babylon. It was around this time that the transition between Yahwism and Judaism -- which had been happening slowly over centuries -- became complete. The Jews came to reject the very existence of the rest of the deities in the Canaanite pantheon and, due to the Babylonian Exile, Jewish practices also picked up Babylonian influences.
ETYMOLOGY OF JUDAISM
The term “Judaism” itself does not come from Hebrew. Rather, it comes from Greek, and dates to the period of the Greek occupation of Judea (i.e. around the time of the story of Hanukkah). “Judaism” comes from Ἰουδαϊσμός” [Ioudaismos], a variation of the Greek term “Hellenismos.” It’s how the Greek occupiers described Jewish culture, religious ritual, and religious belief.
"Ioudaïsmós [was not] reduced to the designation of a religion. It means rather 'the aggregate of all those characteristics that makes Judaeans Judaean (or Jews Jewish).'"
Biblical scholar Shaye J. D. Cohen
To reiterate, for Jews themselves, there was no distinction between their national identity and their religious identity.
JUDAISM AS A RELIGION
Given that the concept of religion is a foreign one to Jewish identity, when did Jews start seeing ourselves as a religious group? It all goes back to Napoleon and the French Revolution.
For hundreds of years in Europe, Jews were denied citizenship, equal rights, and confined to living in ghettos. It was during the French Revolution that Jews were finally emancipated. Shortly after, Napoleon instituted a policy of Jewish emancipation that guaranteed Jews freedom from discrimination -- so long as we stripped the “national” elements from our Jewishness and instead reduced it merely to a religious identity.
In 1806, Napoleon wrote: “[It is necessary to] reduce, if not destroy, the tendency of Jewish people to practice a very great number of activities that are harmful to civilization and to public order in society in all the countries of the world. It is necessary to stop the harm by preventing it; to prevent it, it is necessary to change the Jews…Once part of their youth will take its place in our armies, they will cease to have Jewish interests and sentiments; their interests and sentiments will be French.”
Napoleon’s assimilationist policies fundamentally shifted how Jews understood their identity. This set the groundwork for the Haskalah (Jewish Enlightenment) and the establishment of “religious” Jewish movements, such as the Reform and Conservative movements.
JEWISH IDENTITY
A NATION
If we are looking at Jewish identity through a Jewish lens, it’s important to understand that first and foremost, Jews consider ourselves a nation, which is why we call ourselves Am Yisrael, or the Nation of Israel.
In this context, a nation is not necessarily a nation-state but rather, a group of people whose collective identity includes shared language, history, ethnicity, territory, and/or culture. It’s a term more political in nature than “ethnicity,” as a nation sees itself as having a common political destiny.
AN ETHNORELIGIOUS GROUP
In modern terms, we’d call ourselves an “ethnoreligious group,” meaning an ethnic group with a common religious practice.
A TRIBE
Jews also often refer to ourselves as a tribe, though technically we came from a confederation of tribes. In fact, the word “tribe” comes from “tribus” in Latin, which was first used to describe the 12 tribes of Israel.
WHAT ABOUT THE PHILISTINES?
The Philistines were an ancient seafaring people of Greek origin. They settled in Gaza and parts of what is now southern Israel in 1175 BCE. They are ethnically and culturally unrelated to today’s Palestinians and were exterminated by the Babylonians in the 7th century BCE.
“Philistine” is not what the Philistines called themselves, but rather, what the Israelites and Ancient Egyptians called them. We don’t know what the Philistines called themselves. The word comes from the Hebrew word “peleshet,” meaning “invader,” “squatter,” or “foreigner.”
For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and Patreon.