Talk:Jews

Self-described nation

User:Wolfdog, I'd like to discuss your change in the lead from identifying Jews as "nation" to saying they are "self-described as comprising a nation". For one thing, it's unnecessarily wordy. Even if I were to take your point, "self-described as a nation" would do the trick without the "comprising a" part.

More substantively, isn't a nation always a group of people who identify/describe themselves as such? I fail to see that you've made any distinction here. Rather, whatever it is you're trying to clarify is already implicit in the concept of a nation. Largoplazo (talk) 02:24, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

Just reverted it. Let's see if it lasts. Pyramids09 (talk) 03:20, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I think it's quite clear that that is not the usual meaning of the word nation in English in 2025. I'm happy to remove "comprising" if that was your main contention. My first edit was changing "nation" to "nation in the original sense of the word," but I actually worried THAT was too wordy. Does my concern make sense to you? The way nation is ordinarily used by English speakers today means nation-state and I'm trying to avoid that inevitable confusion for some readers. (There's the State of Israel of course, which has some but not total overlap.) Is there some other wording that could better get this distinction across? Thanks for discussing. Wolfdog (talk) 13:12, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I appreciate your point about confusion with nation-state. Still, at least to me, "self-described" comes across as "they call themselves that, but we know better". Looking to the Nation article for inspiration, I've come up with an alternative proposal, "... an ethnoreligious group and a people sharing a national identity ...". What do you all think? Largoplazo (talk) 13:35, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I was about to offer "an ethnoreligious group often described as a nation". How about that? I think that maybe avoids the inadvertent automatic confusion with modern nation-state entities like France, Israel, Thailand, etc. If you still prefer your alternative, I might just add something like "a traditional national identity" or "sharing a traditional identity as a nation". Wolfdog (talk) 14:11, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

I just saw this when you made the edit—. I don't know what "traditional national identity" means. In contrast to what other kind of national identity? Largoplazo (talk) 16:59, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

One that is recognized by a majority of sovereign states of the United Nations, for example. I'm using "traditional" here to suggest, as I said earlier, that "nation" means "nation in the original sense of the word" as opposed to the common modern sense. ("Traditional" is indeed a relative term, but it was already used in a different location in the lede before I even came along.) Would another adjective be preferred? Wolfdog (talk) 20:36, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

"People of Israel" and "nation of Israel" are both literal translations of the Biblical term עם-ישראל, which refers to the ethnic group. It has nothing to do with politics, and I don't like the rash of recent changes to pages like this which look for excuses to modulate previously-apolitical language through a political lens. We had a similar discussion about the lede image last year. I don't think it's likely to mislead those with basic English literacy—is anybody confused by Nation of Islam? But I have no problem with the current language. GordonGlottal (talk) 19:39, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

It's true that these are literal biblical translations, but nevertheless the word (in English) has evolved since these original translations and thus requires some clarification. We have many young people on Wikipedia, English language learners, etc. and I'm trying to avoid the easy misconception that Jews share some automatic nation-state identity. Clearly, that's not what we mean. (Of course, many Jews live in or feel ties to modern Israel, but that's not what we're saying here -- another justification for being a bit more discerning with our prose). Is there some alternative wording you'd like to offer? Wolfdog (talk) 20:42, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

This is a bizarre conversation. The fact that Americans don't know what the word "nation" means doesn't mean we have to pretend to not know what it means either. Scholarly sources use the word correctly. JDiala (talk) 21:55, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 27 February 2025

First word of article

Please change "The Jews, or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group[14] and nation"

To "Jews, or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group[14] and nation"

No RS to support the use of "the" in this context

<Edit> alternate change to option: “Jews are members of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group[14] and nation[15] originating from the Israelites” Mikewem (talk) 18:00, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

I'll be amazed if you've never seen a scholarly source use "the" in front of the name of an ethnic group or nationality. The Danes, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the Turks—it's ordinary English usage. (🎶That's nobody's business but the Turks'.🎶) Also, a meme that goes back I don't know how many decades is the question of whether something or other is "good for the Jews". Never "good for Jews". It's so ordinary I'm surprised it's a point of contention. Largoplazo (talk) 23:36, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

 Already done Wolfdog (talk · contribs) already performed this request. And as just a note, this guideline states the use of the definite article should be avoided when talking about a collective ethnic group. cyberdog958^Talk 11:11, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

Deletion of quotation about endurance of Judaism

User:JDiala has twice removed[1][2] a sourced quotation about the age of Judaism compared with that of any other modern faith. I thought this was a WP:1RR article (though now I don't see this indicated), so I self-reverted my second reversion. But JDiala's stated justification for the first removal was incorrect and for the second was irrelevant. Any thoughts? Largoplazo (talk) 22:24, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

It is a sourced quotation, but it is from a poor source (a newspaper columnist Charles Krauthammer, not a scholarly work). The poor quality of the source is already enough reason to exclude. But it is also very false. The quotation makes a set of very specific empirical claims, many of which are not true and others which are debatable. For instance, it claims that modern Jews speaks the same language as the Jews of 3,000 years ago. That is false. Modern Jews do not speak Old Hebrew. That is a distinct language from New Hebrew. They are not mutually intelligible. The quote says that Jews are the only nation to worship the same God as 3,000 years ago. That is also contentious at best, because although (as you note) the Hindu pantheon has evolved, they still worship many of the same deities as from the Rigveda period, like Agni. The quote says that Jews have the same name as 3,000 years ago. Yet the word Jew, derived from יְהוּדִי, only began to refer to the entire nation following the Babylonian exile, which was far earlier than 3,000 years ago, as our own article discusses in the "Name and etymology" section.

This is generally a good lesson for why scholarly sources are preferred over newspaper columnists. The latter are incentivized to make bombastic, propagandistic claims (as is happening here, the author is trying to push a certain propaganda narrative that Jews are older, and hence better able to preserve their culture and peoplehood, than everyone else) whereas the former are adept at nuanced, careful evaluations, which is what we want in an encyclopedia. JDiala (talk) 23:16, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

Here you've made some good points, thanks. Based on those, I don't object to the deletion. Largoplazo (talk) 04:08, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

Treating Biblical/Modern Hebrew as a binary leads only to confusion. Hebrew has continuously evolved for the last 3,000 years. The language of Job and that of Esther are far apart. The language of classical rabbinic texts ("Mishnaic Hebrew" and "Amoraic Hebrew") represents another massive shift, but a Modern speaker still struggles to read it unaided. However, the late medieval Hebrew (11th-14th centuries) of Maimonides, Rashi, etc. is largely intelligible to Modern-fluent religious Jews, with a familiar grammatical structure and vocabulary. This is why, despite the gigantic range of texts preserved from this period, and no shortage of scholars engaged in their study, no specialized dictionaries for the study of any historical Hebrew beyond the 6th century CE have ever been produced—resources designed for Modern Hebrew generally suffice. By the late 17th century, Hebrew literary style is already somewhat fixed, and even obscure works would still be accessible to a 21st-century reader. Of course huge quantities of vocabulary have been added in the last 300 years, some European loanwords have dropped out, etc. etc., but the pace of change is actually slow compared to many other languages. Such as English. Mishnaic Hebrew (c. 200 CE) is perhaps as far from 21st-century Hebrew as 14th-century English is to 21st-century English, or: significantly easier than Shakespeare. To find a Hebrew as difficult for modern readers as the English of Beowulf, you would have to look back to earliest Biblical poetry, perhaps 1,700 years further.

Can't speak to the comparative point generally, but Hinduism is no parallel. There is no continuous Hindu literature stretching back thousands of years; only with extensive modern scholarship can a historical narrative be reconstructed analytically, which will never be as specific or coherent, and does not exist within the tradition of Hinduism itself. GordonGlottal (talk) 21:15, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

On Hebrew: the point is that it's complicated. The quote doesn't delve into the complications. That's not acceptable. The reality is that an average Hebrew speaker today would not be able to speak to an Israelite 3,000 years ago. That's enough reason to be very cautious when including such simplistic statements. On Hinduism: putting aside that your claims are false and borderline offensive, and that you are not citing any sources ... the most problematic thing is that you are simply goalpost stretching. Krauthammer made a specific point that only Jews worship the same God as 3,000 years ago. That is false, as it is possible to exhibit specific Hindu Gods from the Rigvega period (1500-500 BCE) which remain in the Hindu pantheon. In fact, several of these Gods are likely derived from earlier proto-Indo-European Gods, so the real timeline could be as long as 5,000 years. Hinduism did of course change and evolve over the millennia, but Judaism did too particularly after the destruction of the temple and the rise of Rabbinic Judaism. The practices and beliefs of, say, modern reform Jews today would be alien and probably even offensive to the Israelites of 3,000 years ago. JDiala (talk) 01:22, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I don't understand your argument. Hebrew exhibits a reasonably slow pace of change over the last 2,500 years. Literally no modern speaker of any language could speak to their ancestor of 2,500 years fluently. A Modern Hebrew speaker would understand far more of Hebrew 2,000 years ago than a modern English speaker could of English 1,000 years ago. The various forms of Hebrew used by 21st-century Jews (including Modern Hebrew) are the "same language" inasmuch as any historical dialect can be the "same language" as a modern version.

I haven't made any claim about theology. It is obviously not true that any denomination of Judaism holds the same tenets today as 3,000 years ago, or 2000 years ago. What constitutes a "same god" is a theological question, but I'm curious—how specifically can you define the Hindu pantheon, and still find 3,500 year parallels? To a specificity that the Jewish god wouldn't also qualify?

The point I was making is that Judaic tradition is continuous, not that it's unchanging. A 21st-century Orthodox Jewish schoolchild can name the major Judaic tradents from every century in the last 2,000 years and their works, and this list would be the same in every previous century, up to its own time. One would reach the same result by opening a modern Judaic ritual code and tracing its citations to the previous generation, and the one before that, etc. This is a genuinely interesting feature of a small religion! And one which is not paralleled in Hinduism. The history of Hinduism's development can certainly not be traced to any such level of detail through its own continuous canon, but only through academic rediscovery, and then still to a lesser extent. Something similar could be said of Christianity, but at the ~1,700 year mark Jews start to have the better claim. GordonGlottal (talk) 04:03, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

You are correct that no one can speak to their ancestors from 3,000 years ago. That's precisely why Krauthammer's statement is misleading, because it could suggest otherwise for Jews. Most readers would associate "same language" with mutual intelligibility. It is also misleading because for the majority of Jewish history (the diaspora period) Hebrew was never a primary language. It was reintroduced in the modern era in a rather artificial way. The statement requires an asterisk at the very least.

Jews did have a "clearer" sense of their history than other peoples because they had a strong legalistic and citation culture. However, I do not think that the historical roots of other peoples can be discredited as being less legitimate simply because they had other modes of communicating their belief (like oral).

I certainly think that there are elements of truth to what you say, and there could be a way to communicate to the reader the story of Jewish continuity, which I don't disagree is in many ways unparalleled. But I don't think Krauthammer does this in a measured way. I would encourage you to propose your own wording if you are interested. I'd also recommend citing scholarly sources, since (as I mentioned above) Krauthammer is not a scholarly source. JDiala (talk) 06:04, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

“Most readers would associate "same language" with mutual intelligibility.”

I don’t believe that to be the case. For example, older versions of English are not intelligible to modern readers, but they’re still English. Drsmoo (talk) 14:54, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

With that said, I do agree that this quotation is not ideal, and a scholar of Jewish Studies would be better. Drsmoo (talk) 14:59, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

We should not be declaring in Wikivoice a statement by political commentator Charles Krauthammer that "The Israelite ancestry makes Jews..." whatever. I agree with JDiala that scholarly publications should always be used in preference to statements by newspaper columnists and TV commentators to cite as sources for historical or political commentary, and I don't think you'll find a genuine scholarly source that supports Krauthammer's declaration. Carlstak (talk) 00:42, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I also would have removed the quotation if I'd noticed it. Zero^talk 04:36, 14 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree that we would need to do better than an opinion piece by Krauthammer. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 05:43, 14 April 2025 (UTC)