Ezra-Nehemiah is a historical account found within the Ketuvim detailing the Israelite return to Judah after the Babylonian exile. It focuses on the desire to restore Israelite society and quickly intermarriage arises as a major issue within this restoration attempt involving the more abstract issue of identity disintegration. The fight over intermarriage in Ezra-Nehemiah is not about racial purity but, instead, is directed at Israelite assimilation and the fear of an impending loss of religious, cultural, and political identity that reformers of Israelite society sought to avoid through a renewed, separatist society. Thus, the intermarriage reforms of Ezra-Nehemiah should be viewed as a direct response to anxiety over identity loss within
…show more content…
One such upheaval encountered by the author of Nehemiah and the group which he represents may be not only existence in exile, but also return from exile, since return migration can be just, if not more, of a challenge to ethnicity. While in exile, groups often attempt to retain the identity of the homeland; thus upon return, the homeland culture appears, paradoxically, to be almost foreign in comparison with the ossified culture perpetuated and artificially preserved through exile. (Southwood, …show more content…
(Collins, 454)
We can then infer that the Ezra-Nehemiah marriage crisis, the reformers strong insistence on separatism, and the continuation of the tradition of marriage within the community, all played key roles in the survival of Judaism. Without the separatism Ezra-Nehemiah popularized, as Collins pointed out earlier, Judaism would have been at risk of disappearing altogether.
As a note, it’s important to draw attention to Ezra-Nehemiah’s complicated legacy within Judaism. The response to the intermarriage crisis is perceived as harsh and the policies advocated by the reformers aren’t in agreement with all accepted biblical traditions within the Hebrew Bible. Collins points this out by saying,
We find a very different approach to the Gentile world in the stories of Ruth and Jonah. Ezra’s career in Jerusalem was short-lived. His purist interpretation of Judaism is contested even with the Hebrew Bible itself. (Collins,
One such upheaval encountered by the author of Nehemiah and the group which he represents may be not only existence in exile, but also return from exile, since return migration can be just, if not more, of a challenge to ethnicity. While in exile, groups often attempt to retain the identity of the homeland; thus upon return, the homeland culture appears, paradoxically, to be almost foreign in comparison with the ossified culture perpetuated and artificially preserved through exile. (Southwood, …show more content…
(Collins, 454)
We can then infer that the Ezra-Nehemiah marriage crisis, the reformers strong insistence on separatism, and the continuation of the tradition of marriage within the community, all played key roles in the survival of Judaism. Without the separatism Ezra-Nehemiah popularized, as Collins pointed out earlier, Judaism would have been at risk of disappearing altogether.
As a note, it’s important to draw attention to Ezra-Nehemiah’s complicated legacy within Judaism. The response to the intermarriage crisis is perceived as harsh and the policies advocated by the reformers aren’t in agreement with all accepted biblical traditions within the Hebrew Bible. Collins points this out by saying,
We find a very different approach to the Gentile world in the stories of Ruth and Jonah. Ezra’s career in Jerusalem was short-lived. His purist interpretation of Judaism is contested even with the Hebrew Bible itself. (Collins,