What is a Jew? Rabbi Moshe Zeldman

hi my name is mosha zelin I'm a teacher at aaor in Jerusalem imagine you're sitting on the train you're sitting on the subway talking on your phone to a friend about plans for rashash Shana Passover you hang up the phone and the guy beside you says did you say something about Passover are you like Jewish or something and you feel a little weird and you say yeah I'm Jewish so the person says you know I've always wondered what exactly are you guys what does it mean to be Jewish this like a club or something like who are you guys what do you guys do what does it mean to be Jewish see here you have three minutes to talk to this person about what being Jewish is so you say it's a religion you know there's Jews there's Christians there's Buddhists there's Muslims I'm Jewish so the man says to you oh you're religious so you say well no I'm actually not religious at all but I'm Jewish anyway and he kind of looks at you and says oh so it's a religious thing but you don't have to be religious to be part of it then that doesn't really make any sense because Christians believe in Jesus right and Buddhists believe in Buddha but being Jewish you don't have to believe anything and you're still Jewish then you're not a religion so you take a second attempt and you say well you're right you know what it really is I'm Jewish not because of what I believe in I'm Jewish because we're like a nation We're a nation all Jews are part of this thing called the Jewish people so he says to you oh where does the nation live in Israel so you say yeah well but I don't really live in Israel and he says whatat language do you guys speak Hebrew he said yeah but I don't really speak Hebrew he saidwell how do Jews dress and what's your culture and what's your history and you say well the truth is we live in lots of countries we speak lots of languages we dress in lots of different ways we eat lots of different foods we have lots of different histories there's Ethiopian Jews and yeminite Jews and spartic Jews and ashkanazi Jews and we live all over the place so he looks at you and says then you're not really a nation either because French people live in France and they speak French and Italian speak live in Italy and they speak Italian so you're not really a nation so what makes you Jewish what ties all Jews together so you take a third attempt and you say you know what it is we're all Jewish because we come from our Jewish parents it's like you're right it's not a religion it's not a nationhood it's like a race we're all part of the same race we're ethnically Jews so this non-jew says to you well I did hear there's a thing called converts you don't have to be born Jewish to become Jewish so you can't be a race either CU there's Chinese people who are Chinese because their parents are Chinese but being Jewish has nothing to do with that because you could be Jewish just because he chose to be Jewish that's not a Race So you're not really a religion and you're not really a nation you're not really a Race So what the heck are you and if you think about it you gather a group of Jews into a room get look at any Jewish Gathering and you say what's the one thing that ties us all together where no matter what we live and what language we speak and what religion we follow and whatever we practice whatever we believe whatever we come from whatever our ancestry is converts non-con converts what binds us together what makes us Jews it's so unusual so this question bothered me for years until I finally found an answer Rabbi Adin steinsaltz in one of his books writes that the Jewish people are called one thing consistently in the entire Torah we're called Ben Israel the children of Israel so when I read that I thought about it what does it mean that we're all the children of Israel who's Israel well if you look biblically Israel is this fellow named Jacob his name got changed to Israel but really we're called the children of Jacob the children of Israel is the children of Jacob we're all Jake's kids every Jew you meet in the world is just another one of Jake's kids so when you realize that for every Jew you ever bump into you're bumping into another one of Jake's kids what does that Define us all as it defines us as a family being Jewish is you're part of this special thing called the Jewish Family how do we understand converts a convert is somebody who got adopted into the family and when you adopt somebody new into your family they're part of your family just like everybody else they take on your name they sit at the dinner table with you you treat them like treat them like all your other kids your family is your family when I discovered this idea I was sitting in a bookstore I started walking down the stairs of the Old City to the cotel because I was going to go and pray and I looked around me at all of these Jews secular Israeli soldiers Kim American tourists Ethiopian Jews people arguing with each other in a very Israeli way I looked around me and I said wow you know what Jews really are we're like the world's biggest most dysfunctional family that's who we really are and yet somehow we stick together somehow we know we're all in the same boat and somehow we know whether you're a practicer of Judaism or you're not whether you're observant or you're not whether you're living in Israel you're not living in Israel you speak the language you know the Customs you follow the holidays or you don't Jews are Jews and if we know that we're a family that's the glue that's going to help us stick together and love each other and stick throughout all time doing the job Jews are supposed to do in the world [Music]