Being Jewish in the United States

There is no singular answer to what it means to be Jewish. Jews are an ethnoreligious group, which means that Jews share common religious, ethnic, and/or geographic origins. Judaism, one of the world’s earliest documented monotheistic ¹ religions, began in the Middle East over 3,500 years ago; in modern times, Jews may identify with any one or more of the following: a shared belief system or religion, values, practices, culture, lineage, or peoplehood. Only about 20% of American Jews consider Judaism (the religion) to be a central part of what makes them Jewish. ²  This complexity and fluidity is what can make Jewish identity so unique but also difficult to define.

Today, more than 14 million Jews live in dozens of countries around the world. In the United States as of 2020, there were about 7.5 million Jews, making up about 2.4% of the population. ³

Like the members of any religion or culture, Jews think about and express their identities in a variety of ways, prioritizing their Jewish identity differently within the mix of other factors that make them who they are. In the following three reflections, Rebecca, then age 17, Sara, then age 18, and Angela, an adult, explain the influence that Judaism has on their lives. These are only three examples from the numerous ways that Jews around the world relate to the faith and culture of Judaism. 

Rebecca writes:

[I]n the Torah ⁴ , there are 613 commandments. They involve everything from how you treat other people, to Jewish holidays and how we observe them, and the Sabbath, which is every week, and how we observe that. It’s like a guide how to live.

There are also a lot of dietary laws. The dietary laws say we can only eat certain kinds of meat that are killed and prepared in a certain way. We can’t eat meat at nonkosher restaurants. My parents like to remind me of this funny story. One time when I was two, we were driving past a Burger King. I saw the sign, and I yelled out, “That sign says Burger King. No burgers for Jewish people.” I picked up on those observances. It was always something that was part of me. I recognized that it was important.

We set the Sabbath aside as a day of rest because God rested on the seventh day after creating the world. Because of this, there are lots of rules for things you can and can’t do . . . It’s supposed to be a day of rest—you’re not supposed to do any type of work, or watch television, use the computer, use electricity, any of that stuff . . . For me it’s very spiritual. It really separates the day out from the rest of the week.

I spend a lot of time with my family—from Friday night at sundown until Saturday night. I go to prayers at my synagogue ⁵ in the morning and sometimes in the afternoon. It’s just a really spiritual experience. It makes it more of an important day . . .

I haven’t gone to see a movie on a Saturday or Friday night ever.

It’s weird being in a public high school because you’re faced with being in a school where there’s lots of activities on Friday nights and things to miss out on. Like all the school plays are on Friday nights. I have to give up trying out for school plays. And sports—I used to play softball. But there are games every Saturday, so I couldn’t play those.

A lot of people look at it like, “How can you give up all of this stuff because of your religion?” It’s just a matter of how you look at it. You can look at it as being a burden—that you have these religious obligations, so you’re not able to do your school activities. But I look at it as a more positive experience. It’s something that I choose to do. ⁶

Sara, age 18, feels differently about the rituals and worship practices of Judaism:

I feel really connected with my Jewish community, but a little less connected to the observance factor of my religion. I don’t keep kosher. I don’t really feel that that’s necessary. When I was little, my whole family would sit down every Friday night and light the Shabbat candles and say the blessings. We don’t do that anymore. Now it’s like, “It’s Friday night. I’m going to go out with my friends.”

I don’t like organized prayer. Every once in a while I go to services, but I appreciate it a lot more when I do my own thing and say my own prayers . . .

When I was younger, I never really thought I was different ’cause I was Jewish. It didn’t occur to me until high school when I started getting really involved with stuff. It’s kind of weird when I really think about it. It’s like I’m just like everyone else, except there’s that little part of me that’s going to be Jewish forever, and that makes me different. ⁷

Born in Seoul, Korea, to a Korean Buddhist mother and an American Jewish father, Angela explains how she grew to understand herself within the diversity of Jewish life around the world and throughout history:

Growing up, I knew my family was atypical, yet we were made to feel quite at home in our synagogue and community . . .

As a child, I believed that my sister and I were the “only ones” in the Jewish community—the only ones with Asian faces, the only ones whose family trees didn’t have roots in Eastern Europe, the only ones with kimchee on the seder plate. But as I grew older, I began to see myself reflected in the Jewish community. I was the only multiracial Jew at my Jewish summer camp in 1985; when I was a song-leader there a decade later, there were a dozen. I have met hundreds of people in multiracial Jewish families in the Northeast through the Multiracial Jewish Network. Social scientist Gary Tobin numbers interracial Jewish families in the hundreds of thousands in North America.

As I learned more about Jewish history and culture, I found it very powerful to learn that being of mixed race in the Jewish community was not just a modern phenomenon. We were a mixed multitude when we left Egypt and entered Israel, and the Hebrews continued to acquire different cultures and races throughout our Diaspora history. Walking through the streets of modern-day Israel, one sees the multicolored faces of Ethiopian, Russian, Yemenite, Iraqi, Moroccan, Polish, and countless other races of Jews—many facial particularities, but all Jewish . . .

What does it mean to be a “normal” Jewish family today? As we learn each other’s stories we hear the challenges and joys of reconciling our sometimes competing identities of being Jewish while also feminist, Arab, gay, African-American, or Korean. We were a mixed multitude in ancient times, and we still are . . . ⁸

Connection Questions

1. Create identity Charts for Rebecca, Sara, and Angela in your journal. Use evidence from the text to support your ideas about each young woman’s identity. What do they have in common? What differences do you notice?
2. What role does religious belief and practice seem to play in the identities of Rebecca, Sara, and Angela?
3. How do the information and reflections in this reading connect to, extend, or challenge your understanding of what it means to be Jewish? What new questions does this reading raise for you?

• 1Monotheism: The belief that there is only one God.
• 2Jeff Diamant, “Jews in U.S. are far less religious than Christians and Americans overall, at least by traditional measures,” Pew Research Center, May 13, 2021.
• 3Brandeis University Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, “US Jewish Population Estimates 2020,” American Jewish Population Project, May 18, 2021.
• 4Torah: A central religious text in Judaism; it includes five books, which also appear as the first five books in the Christian Bible.
• 5Synagogue: A Jewish house of worship.
• 6“How Can You Give Up All of This Stuff Because of Your Religion?,” in Pearl Gaskins, I Believe In . . . : Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Young People Speak About Their Faith (Chicago: Cricket Books, 2004), 58–59. Reproduced by permission from Carus Publishing Company.
• 7“I Wear Two Stars of David,” in Gaskins, I Believe In . . . , 33. Reproduced by permission from Carus Publishing Company.
• 8Angela Warnick Buchdahl, “My Personal Story: Kimchee on the Seder Plate,” in Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Responsibility (June 2003). Reproduced with permission from Sh’ma as part of a larger issue on inclusivity.