Spinning Pluto

The demotion of Pluto from classroom mobiles to “dwarf planet” prompts an obvious question: Is Judaism a race, a religion, or a nation?

That’s a familiar question, of course, and is asked so often because race, religion, and nationhood are all social constructs. There is really no objective, scientific way of determining what we are, and no real agreement, even among the Jews. As a result, the answer is only significant when you know who’s asking, and why. When the Nazis decided Judaism is a race, it defined the terms of their program for genocide. When a Jew does the same, it can serve the chauvinistic purpose of excluding Jews by choice or, conversely, embracing individuals whose Jewish beliefs and practices are otherwise vestigial.

You can perform the same exercise with religion or nationhood. Israeli novelist A.B. Yehoshua recently set off a brouhaha by defining Judaism as a nation. He belittled a Diaspora that defines its Jewishness by religious practice, cultural affinity, or vicarious Israelism, each of which depends on discrete — and in his view, artificial — cultural or social gestures. By contrast, Yehoshua has said, “I create my identity, my Jewish identity, every moment of my life, with everything that I do.”

As linguist Geoff Nunberg said on NPR’s Fresh Air, discussing poor Pluto, “After all, language routinely recognizes natural categories that have no good scientific basis. There’s no geological reason why we should consider Europe a separate continent from Asia, and no botanical reason why we should refer to tomatoes as vegetables rather than as fruits.” But such nomenclature is useful for purposes of politics, culture, convenience, clarity, and collecting membership dues.

A headline in a New Jersey newspaper suggested that Pluto had “died” as a result of its reclassification. Of course, it’s still there, spinning around the sun — its new name solves an astronomer’s problem, not the universe’s. This may sound like a fund-raising tag line, but Pluto Is Us. Call the Jews what you will, but that doesn’t keep us from spinning on, doing our own thing(s), and commanding planet Earth’s attention despite our small size and peculiar orbit.