Q&A: Present-Day Hellenizers
Present-Day Hellenizers
Question
Hello, Your Honor,
I wanted to ask: I am secular (though I celebrate Hanukkah). Am I not the same kind of Hellenizer whom the Hasmoneans, zealots for God, stabbed with the sword?
Answer
Definitely yes. Much worse than a Hellenizer, because it is not only about culture but about non-observance of Jewish law.
Still, if you do not believe, then you are coerced, and certainly one must not stab you. But Judaism is only commitment to Jewish law. Whoever does not have that is not Jewish (except in the ethnic sense).
Discussion on Answer
I have no idea. I think it is hard to define Jewishness according to my description because it is not unequivocal (what exactly counts as someone who is obligated to observe the commandments?). In any case, the halakhic determination establishes the ethnicity. What I am talking about is the definition of Judaism, not the definition of a Jew. There are quite a few ethnic Jews who have absolutely nothing to do with Judaism.
Okay—you people are tough.
Just one question: why does Jewish law itself define a Jew according to the ethnic sense and not the halakhic one, as you say?
Just so that afterward people can be stabbed?