Who Are We? How Should We Treat Others?
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
This Dvar Torah was authored by Dr. Bella Tendler Krieger, Director of CAJE’s Department of Adult Learning and Growth based on a lecture given by Rabbi Ethan Tucker.
Photo by Michele Eve Sandberg Photography
On Wednesday, February 12th, as part of the SAGES in the 305 public lecture series sponsored in loving memory of Charles Ganz z”l, Temple Judea was buzzing with energy as more than 150 people gathered to hear Rabbi Ethan Tucker, President and Rosh Yeshiva of the Hadar Institute.
Rabbi Ethan Tucker: A Big Question for Our Time
Rabbi Tucker’s topic? A deceptively simple question: What is a Jew?
“A Jew is someone with an identity crisis,” he jokingly began.
With characteristic clarity and depth, Rabbi Tucker showed that this “identity crisis” is not a modern invention — it is built into Jewish history itself.
In the biblical world, he explained, ethnicity and religion were fused.
To be an Israelite meant belonging to a people descended from a shared ancestor and bound by covenant to a shared God.
The Torah speaks of God’s covenant not only with individuals, but with their “seed” and descendants across generations.
Jewishness, in that model, runs through the family line — inescapable, inherited, embodied.
But history changed.
With the rise of Hellenistic civilization, ethnicity and religion were separated for the first time.
Greek culture created the possibility of joining a civilization without sharing its ancestry.
Suddenly, Jews faced a new and destabilizing question: Are we primarily an ethnic people, defined by birth and bloodline? Or are we a religion, defined by belief, practice, and mission?
Rabbi Tucker laid out the two powerful strands that developed within Jewish tradition:
- An ethnic model, in which Jewish identity is grounded in peoplehood and descent—stable, familial, and resistant to heresy - hunting.
- A religious model, in which Judaism is a mission and way of life that can be embraced by anyone through conversion — but also, at least in theory, abandoned.
He demonstrated that rabbinic Judaism never fully resolved this tension.
Instead, it preserved both models in creative and sometimes uncomfortable balance.
That unresolved tension continues to shape Jewish life today.
In Israel, Jewishness often functions primarily as a national and ethnic identity.
In America, many Jews seek to hold together ethnic belonging and religious voluntarism — sometimes without fully reckoning with the contradictions between them.
This was not abstract theory.
It was a conversation about key issues for the Jewish community: belonging, boundaries, conversion, intermarriage, solidarity, and the future of the Jewish people.
Listen to the Event Recording
View the Slide Presentation
Rabbi Shai Held: Philosopher, Theologian, Author, President and Dean of the Hadar Institute.
Don’t Miss our next #SAGESinthe305 lecture — this Wednesday, March 4th at 7:00pm @ Aventura Turnberry Jewish Center where we welcome Rabbi Shai Held, President and Dean of the Hadar Institute who will speak on “Loving Our Neighbor: What It Means & Why It’s So Hard.”
There may be no more foundational commandment in Judaism than “love your neighbor.” But what does it actually demand of us? How far does that love extend? And why is it so difficult to live out—personally, communally, and politically?
This topic could not be more timely. Just this Sunday, Rabbi Held published a powerful New York Times op-ed on immigration and religious responsibility, bringing Jewish moral vision into one of today’s most urgent public debates:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/22/opinion/immigrants-religion-bible-politics.html
Open to the community. No cost to attend.
To register, at https://caje-miami.org/rabbi-shai-held
Come be part of serious Jewish learning.
Come be challenged.
Come to #SAGESinthe305.
