“I’m asking what makes a Jew. The Torah answer is that the Torah makes us Jewish, and nothing else. The secular zionist answer is that land, ancestry, languags, culture and a history make us Jewish.”
This is an oft propagated idea of the anti-Zionists in the frum community. But I honestly think that it’s the opposite. The Torah says that if someone’s mother is Jewish he is Jewish. This makes our religion very ethnic and nationalistic. Even people far removed from Yiddeshkeit such as Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, and Marx are considered Jewish because of this. The Torah contributes to identifying Jews in an ethnic instead of a religious way. Zionism would not be possible without the Torah already putting forth the idea that people completely removed from Yiddeshkeit are still Jewish based on their ancestry alone. The Torah’s definition of a Jew is not the polar opposite of Zionism’s despite protestations that it is.