I've found Armenian Twitter's internal discussions on identity & "who is a real Armenian" interesting when comparing to the Jewish community. According to Jewish Law, you are Jewish if you're born to a Jewish mother or convert to Judaism (Jewishness being an ethnoreligion). 1/25

But the truth is that historically, "Jewishness" (a later term referring to the region of Judea btw; in biblical terminology it's just "Israelite") was an organic process, tied to the land and extant people on it. You join the nation and you integrate/merge, you're in. 2/25

It was only later, once Jews began experiencing foreign empire hegemony, expulsion, and/or migration outward to the point that the majority of them were in diaspora, that "Rabbinic Judaism" basically developed further and established rigid laws for this. 3/25

So the concept of conversions as a formal ritual/naturalization was codified. And Jewishness was defined maternally, presumably because it's easier to keep parental tabs in the micro family unit this way (in ancient times, many biblical figures married foreign women). 4/25

In contrast, when you're an organic national unit and not a diaspora trying to hold together, natural merging and expected integration just occurs organically, the way it has in most nations around the world. Developments in diaspora over the last few centuries have... 5/ 25

sort of blurred waters though. Following the Enlightenment of the 1700s, many Jews began shifting away from Jewishness as a national diasporic identity (traditional religious Jewish texts self identify as "Judean" and "Israelite" - geographic terms) and began assuming the... 6/25

national identities of their host nations, with Jewishness being shed of national markers and retaining merely the religious aspects (so Germans "of the faith of Moses," and things of that nature). This was also a tactic to assimilate, especially post Emancipation of Jews... 7/25

...in Western Europe, whereas priorly Jews were confined to their own communities & systematically limited from many jobs/opportunities. In Western/Central Europe, in stark contrast to the traditional Jews of the "Orient," different denominations of Judaism also began... 8/25

to emerge. The two main outgrowths of this that are extant today are Reform and, later, Conservative Judaism. Essentially these movements did not believe in the necessarily authoritative nature of biblical texts, and found Rabbinic codification of the law to be fluid. 9/25

(Qualifier: Conservative Judaism is a lot more nuanced, like it doesn't believe in divine authorship of texts but at root still believed in the need to remain loyal to Jewish law & traditions.) Anyways naturally this deviation of rigid tradition to a large extent led to... 10/25

...a fallout of traditions, and eventually in 1983 the Reform Movement decided that they'd accept patrilineal Jews as equally Jewish as matrilineal Jews. The Conservative movement later followed. (Orthodox or traditional Jews still do not accept this as valid.) 11/25

Likewise, Orthodox Jews do not view the conversions conducted by other denominations' courts as legitimate (long story short, b/c their ideology is an aberration from traditional law - and as perceived heretics, they cannot be valid jurors on a court). Anyway, all these... 12/25

domestic disputes in the Jewish world has lasting effects until today, like in how Israel conducts citizenship via law of return vs recognition of Jewishness (two separate categories) - basically Israel as a state will allow you to become a citizen if you have at least 1... 13/25

Jewish grandparent or convert to Judaism through any mainstream denomination, but you will only domestically be recognized as Jewish (so for instance, able to be married through the religious Jewish marriage system) if you have a Jewish mother or did an Orthodox conversion. 14/25

In diaspora discourse, there's a lot of non-Orthodox Jews (majority of Jews btw) who essentially say if you're a patrilineal Jew you're 100% Jewish, & anyone who says otherwise is a "bigot" etc. (traditional law notwithstanding). So outside the *highly* strict rigidity... 15/25

of traditional Judaism (and can't stress this enough, Jewish ritual is highly regulatory, like from 3 prayers a day, to what you can eat, blessings on food you make, things you can do, holidays, rituals, etc.), you get a lack of clear-cut guidance as to defining a Jew. 16/25

The perk of the traditional model is that as rigid as it is, it doesn't really leave room for ambiguity and is very binary; it's like defining "American" as having U.S. citizenship: you're born into it or else you become naturalized. Very legal, very absolute. 17/25

With other models, it's sort of like the discourse you see with other identities and nuances therein. You're x or y "if you're mixed," "if you identify that way," "if you make an effort to learn the culture/language." I've said numerous times that the reason I've been... 18/25

really fascinated with Armenian national identity is because there's a lot of parallels to the Jewish one: we have a similar global population (11 million vs. 14 million), a diaspora throughout the world w/ more people it it than within the homeland, historical endogamy... 19/25

...a nationality tethered to a national religion, preservation of language and cultural communities within other lands, etc. But when I asked friends whether Armenians have any prohibition on intermarriage or criteria for defining Armenian identity traditionally, doesn't... 20/25

seem to be the case. So I've seen a lot of internal back and forth about pushing back against those who attempt to gatekeep the identity. Again, as an outsider kinda intriguing to me because there's very similar discourse in Jewish circles. In traditional Jewish circles,... 21/25

some would argue that gatekeeping is what has historically preserved us, and honestly on a statistical level it's hard to dispute that. For ex: long term projection rates are for Orthodox Jews to eventually become a majority of US Jews due to this: https://forward.com/news/402663/orthodox-will-dominate-american-jewry-in-coming-decades-as-population/ 22/25

Yet others are cognizant of the inevitability of assimilation in diaspora, and view fluid and egalitarian openness as the way to preserve the culture. Again a parallel I see with both communities. But I also noticed that there's no equivalent to ironclad Jewish law with... 23/25

Armenian identity. Per hardcore gatekeeping & traditionalist types, is being Armenian = baptized to the Armenian Church? Is it inclusive to any citizen of Armenia? Do you need to know the language? Two parents that are Armenian? Seems to lack a working definition anyways. 24/25

Anyways I'm a total outsider here and this is an internal communal conversation, I just noted a lot of interesting parallels so figured I'd weigh in on what I thought those similarities were. Thoughts/comments/feedback welcome. :) 25/25