Discover how Judaism weaves religion, culture, ancestry, and identity into a collective story spanning generations.
Essential Questions
- What is Judaism? Is it an ethnicity, race, religion, people, family or culture?
- Why do some different Jewish communities practice their rituals differently?
- What unites the Jewish people across cultures, geography, and time?
Big Ideas
- Being Jewish Can Mean Many Things: Religious belief, cultural expression, shared ancestry, historical memory, peoplehood, communal traditions, or a combination.
- Judaism is a Living Tradition: Judaism is constantly evolving while staying connected to its beliefs, practices, and traditions.
- Judaism Transcends Borders and Time: Despite geographic dispersion and cultural differences, Jews remain connected through shared stories, holidays, texts, and symbols.
Judaism is often described as a religion, but this resource explores its deeper complexity as an ethno-religion, a blending of faith, culture, ethnicity, and peoplehood rooted in a shared story. While Jewish life takes many forms, it is united by common threads of ancestry, memory, tradition, and community. This video and the accompanying materials invite students to consider what it means to belong to a global family that is at once religious, cultural, and historical. Together, learners will explore the diversity of Jewish experiences, reflect on the ways Judaism has been expressed across time and place, and ask big questions about identity, belonging, and continuity.
How to use this guide
This guide is designed to enhance your students’ engagement with the video. You can pause at the suggested “Stop/Do/Discuss” points to explore key concepts through discussion and reflection questions provided for each section. Alternatively, you may prefer to show the entire video without breaks and use the discussion questions and activities at the end of this guide (“Summative Activities & Reflection”) for a comprehensive post-viewing discussion. You can also utilize a flipped classroom approach, assigning the video (in full or in segments) for students to watch at home, then using class time to unpack ideas together through reflection, discussion, or hands-on activities. Choose the approach that best fits your students and classroom setting, whether it’s real-time engagement or a deeper dive after the video.
Discussion Questions
- Breaking Definitions: How would you define Judaism? Why is it challenging to use modern labels like race, religion, ethnicity, nationality for Jews?
- Unity and Diversity: Are there any aspects of Judaism that unite all Jews (language, belief, ritual, geography, etc)? Which aspects of Judaism unite most Jews? How can Judaism remain a distinct group if there are so many different ways of being Jewish?
Learning Activities
- Ethno-Religious Groups: The video discussed other pre-modern groups that don’t fall easily into the categories of nations, ethnicities, or religions. These included: the Druze, the Yazidis, and the Samaritans. Choose one of these groups and make a chart comparing the similarities and differences to the Jews. Some questions to consider: Are these groups biologically related to one another? Can someone convert into this group? How many members does each group have today? Where do they live? Do they have a geographic center/homeland?
- Primary Source Activity: Divide students into small groups. Give each group 3–4 primary source excerpts, each fitting one of the three categories (Beliefs, Practices, Identity).
Students should:- Read each source aloud together.
- Identify which category it fits in and explain why.
- Discuss: How does this source help define Jewish identity?
Come together as a full class. Each group shares one belief source, one practice source, and one identity source that stood out to them. How do beliefs, practices, and peoplehood work together to create a shared identity?
Closing Reflection: Students should write a short personal response: Based on the video and the sources, what do you think is the single most important thread that holds the global Jewish family together?
- Digital Learning Resource: Facing History and Ourselves “Components of Jewish Identity”
- Video: R. Jonathan Sacks “Why I am a Jew”
- Article: R. Moshe Taragin “Passover 2025: Are we a nation or a family?”
- Article: Daniel Septimus “The Thirteen Principles of Faith”
- Survey Report: Pew Research Center “Jewish identity and belief”