{"id":45921,"date":"2025-02-14T01:42:22","date_gmt":"2025-02-14T09:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=45921"},"modified":"2025-02-13T16:25:48","modified_gmt":"2025-02-14T00:25:48","slug":"how-jews-are-indigenous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2025\/02\/14\/how-jews-are-indigenous\/","title":{"rendered":"How Jews are indigenous"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last month, Ben M. Freeman spoke about his latest book, The Jews: An Indigenous People, as part of Kolot Mayim Reform Temple\u2019s 2024\/25 speaker series. <\/i>(PR photo)<\/i><\/p>\n

Ben M. Freeman, founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement, spoke from his home in London, England, about his work and ideas in a Zoom webinar on Jan. 12. Titled Building Jewish Pride and Recognizing Jewish Indigeneity, the virtual event was hosted by Victoria\u2019s Kolot Mayim Reform Temple.<\/p>\n

The author of Jewish Pride: Rebuilding a People<\/i> and Reclaiming our Story: The Pursuit of Jewish Pride<\/i>, Freeman\u2019s latest, The Jews: An Indigenous People<\/i>, will be released this month. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Freeman began by calling into question the perception that indigeneity implies people who have lived on the land and are primitive or oppressed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have great issue with that because the idea of those things being inherent is to destroy the great diversity of the indigenous experience,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The United Nations, he explained, set up seven criteria used to determine the indigeneity of a people to a particular land. Freeman, in his writings and talks, argues that Jews are indigenous to the land of Israel even by the UN\u2019s criteria.<\/p>\n

\u201c[The UN] also created rights for indigenous people: the ability to have self-determination, the ability to practise your own religion, have your own language, all of these different things. But, again, many of them are still rooted in this idea that indigenous people are inherently oppressed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not here to say that indigenous people have not experienced oppression. That would be ludicrous. Many indigenous groups do experience that, but we can\u2019t necessarily say these things are inherent\u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

To view certain groups as only victims, he contended, strips them of agency.\u00a0 <\/span>Freeman would define an indigenous people, rather, as a group whose collective identity begins in one specific land, and it is in that land they remain rooted either physically, spiritually or culturally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is their home and is where they originated, developed and continue to be fixed through a connection to the environment and natural resources, living systems, culture and practice as a people, irrespective of their sovereignty in the land,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>This definition, Freeman believes, not only applies to Jews in Israel but also refers to the experiences of the Maori in New Zealand and First Nations in Canada, and other peoples in other countries.<\/p>\n

From his perspective, Jews were a small group of tribes that developed into a civilization over time. The Torah played a large part as it codified Jewish civilization by taking practices that already existed, reshaped some of them and retold some of the stories, creating a culture that contains religion.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlmost all the practices were rooted in the land. Pesach was two different festivals: one was a matzah festival and one was a sacrifice festival. Rosh Hashanah, our new year, was the beginning of the agrarian year. Shavuot is an agricultural holiday,\u201d Freeman said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the odd experiences of being Jewish is that we exist in this cognitive dissonance almost because we will describe ourselves officially in many ways as a religion, but then we have so much of our practice rooted in land.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman also put forward that a distinguishing characteristic of Judaism is that, unlike Christianity, it can be a religion but not exclusively a faith or creed.<\/p>\n

\u201cChristianity has creed. My partner is a Christian and I sometimes ask him, \u2018Could you be a Christian without believing in Jesus?\u2019 And he\u2019s like, \u2018no.\u2019 We don\u2019t have that,\u201d said Freeman. \u201cThat\u2019s why you can have atheist, secular or agnostic Jews who are part of Am Yisrael. There is nothing we have to believe to be Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman went on to discuss Jewish pride, which, for him, bears three central tenets. The first is to encourage and empower Jews to reject the shame of antisemitism \u2013 to wear one\u2019s Jewishness as a badge of honour.<\/p>\n

The second point is to repudiate non-Jewish definitions of Jewish identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just feel it\u2019s so egregious to me that non-Jews think they have a right to tell us what it means to be Jewish or any aspect of that experience. This is my identity. I will tell you what it means to be a Jew,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The third tenet is for Jews to go on a journey to explore their identity through a Jewish perspective. \u201cWe have to be able to say this is who we are,\u201d he said, \u201cbut we have to humbly accept that takes time. We need to be doing real work to investigate our Jewishness and then, most importantly, [do it] through a Jewish lens.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freeman is scheduled to travel to Canada in March to discuss The Jews: An Indigenous People<\/i>, with appearances in Toronto, Windsor and Edmonton. His schedule may include stops in Ottawa and Vancouver, as well.<\/p>\n

Next up in the Kolot Mayim 2024\/25 lecture series, on March 2, 11 a.m., is Jonathan Bergwerk, author of the Audacious Jewish Lives<\/i> books, who will speak about Jewish innovators who changed the world. Go to kolotmayimreformtemple.com to register.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sam Margolis<\/b> has written for the <\/i>Globe and Mail, the <\/i>National Post, UPI and MSNBC.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month, Ben M. Freeman spoke about his latest book, The Jews: An Indigenous People, as part of Kolot Mayim Reform Temple\u2019s 2024\/25 speaker series. (PR photo) Ben M. Freeman, founder of the modern Jewish Pride movement, spoke from his home in London, England, about his work and ideas in a Zoom webinar on Jan. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45923,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[20650,5914,23817,23816,9270],"class_list":["post-45921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-ben-m-freeman","tag-identity","tag-indigeneity","tag-jewish-pride","tag-kolot-mayim"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}