Wikipedia:Jew-tagging

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Jew-tagging is the practice of singling out Jewish people in Wikipedia for special or disproportionate notice. While mention or emphasis of a person’s ethnic or religious identity may be of fundamental importance in a biographical article, Jew-tagging usually takes the form of mere mention, often unsourced, or without context that indicates such identity as central to someone’s life. In its malicious form, it is similar to the triple parentheses or (((echo))), to target individuals seen as typifying Jewish stereotypes as seen through an anti-Semitic point of view. A more benign form can be motivated by pride in Jewish heritage and a desire to celebrate the achievements of Jewish people.

Wikipedia's manual of style sets consistent standards for the descriptions of biographical subjects. The opening paragraph should describe a person's predominant nationality or region of origin, along with name, date of birth (and death if applicable), occupation or activity, and reasons for notability in the context of Wikipedia's notability guidelines for biographies. Wikipedia's biographies of living persons policy sets a fundamental basis for compulsory reliable sourcing, verifiability, referencing, and due emphasis in articles and discussions of living individuals throughout the encyclopedia, not just in articles.

Ethnicity, religion, or sexuality are generally inappropriate for inclusion in the opening paragraph, unless they are explicitly due emphasis in a person's life and notability, as judged by biographical sources and supported by referenced content. Substitution of ethnicity or religion for nationality, or mixing or equating nationality with ethnicity (i.e., Polish-Jewish) are discouraged in the context of the opening section of an article.

On Wikipedia the act of gratuitously calling out Jewish heritage usually takes two forms:

• One, generally benign, at least in intent, associates Jewish people with meritorious accomplishments.
• Another, often malicious, applies an ethno-religious label to a person, as a means of “othering”; setting a person apart from their compatriots as alien or different.

Both of these practices are discouraged. In the most broad sense, singling out a subset of subjects, particularly those who are not part of a cultural majority, leads to inequities in the manner such subjects are portrayed, compared to a prevailing culture. This produces systemic bias, where the prevailing culture is by default described as the norm, and the subject receiving focus on ethnicity is featured as a special case. This distorts the encyclopedia.

Allosemitism is a relatively recent coinage that encompasses both facets of Jew-tagging. As described by Ruth Gruber, it is "the idea that, good or bad, Jews are different from the non-Jewish mainstream and thus unable to be dealt with in the same way or measured by the same yardstick"^[1]

Philosemitism or Judeophilia is broadly defined as "defense, love, or admiration of Jews and Judaism".^[2] The term carries ambiguity and has been described as something that "can indeed easily recycle antisemitic themes, recreate Jewish otherness, or strategically compensate for Holocaust guilt."^[3] The term has at times been employed as a pejorative.^[4]

Sometimes the tagging takes the form of entirely replacing nationality with "Jewish," which is not a nationality. Other times it takes the form of adding it as a modifier, implying something less than entire belonging to a nationality, or divided allegiance, in a manner that would never be applied to someone who could be described as, for example, Italian-Catholic. On other occasions it may take the simple form of "he/she is Jewish," with or without a source, with no further indication of significance.

A problem exists in differentiating between ostensibly benign celebration of Jewish heritage and malicious tagging. People’s motivations on the Internet cannot be judged by any information that is not immediately evident on the face of their activity. Malicious editors are aware of this, and may couch their edits accordingly, or may piously deny any malign intention.

Obviously maliciously-intended edits may be dealt with summarily. A frequent phenomenon is the tagging of articles concerning Jewish people who have done, or are perceived to have done something objectionable or controversial. This kind of emphasis would rarely or never happen for subjects who have done similar things but are members of the dominant culture. People in occupations stereotypically associated with Jewish participation may receive similar treatment.

Tagging may also extend to categorization. Categories are required to be reflective of the sourced article content, and may not be added on a speculative basis. Mere mention in an article of Jewish ancestry does not qualify the subject to be categorized as Jewish.

While gratuitous or contextless mention of religion or ethnicity are deprecated, this must not extend to active removal of appropriate, sourced focus on notable ethnic and religious affiliations. Removal or denial of Jewish history and culture is in some ways a mirror of Jew-tagging, and at least as pernicious. Editors who have attempted to emphasize Jewish achievements may view the removal or editing of benign tagging as an attempt at erasure. Such objections must be met with tact and understanding, and may be viewed as opportunities to expand on the relationship between a subject's ethnoreligious identity and its significance in the subject's biography. Cultural erasure may also be cited by malicious editors whose edits have been reversed and who seek to conceal their motivations.

Editors are encouraged to edit subjects that interest and engage them personally, including their own cultures and religions. As with any subject in Wikipedia, it is important to consciously maintain editorial distance from the subject and to strive for a neutral presentation within a consensus of reliable sources.

Although undue emphases on religion or ethnicity are discouraged in the opening paragraph of biographies, there are occasions where mention is appropriate, as in the case of prominent rabbis and religious scholars, or people whose entire notability is founded on their ethnicity. In such cases, the article body should include substantial support for the scope and nature of any emphasis in the article introduction. The lead paragraph represents a summary of the sourced body of the article, and so must be based on reliable academic or journalistic sources, with appropriate inline references in the article body, and reflective of the emphasis provided in the article.

For many people their faith and their ethnic affiliation are private matters, and they do not care to be tagged in that manner. Edward Kosner specifically addressed this in a 2020 article in Commentary entitled Jew-Tagging @Wikipedia: Why is the online encyclopedia so interested? [2] Kosner describes his frustrations in removing what he felt was an intrusive effort to tag him as Jewish, with no context or relevance to his life or career, simply because it could be referenced. Kosner references other biographies in which people's ethnicity or religion, while documentable, are either ignored or mentioned in passing without special emphasis. The examples Kosner gives emphasize that treatment of that kind is broadly applied for members of majority cultures. He goes on to cite the New York Times style book:

I thought it would be useful to compare Wikipedia’s approach with the way the New York Times handles the question of Jewish identification in its obituaries. The Times style book ordains that the religion of a person in the news should be mentioned only when it is pertinent and its pertinence is clear to the reader. “It’s subjective, like most other decisions,” says a Times staffer, “and open to a lot of second-guessing, but the general rule is not to mention religion unless there’s a reason to because of the person’s profession, accomplishments, experiences.” That sounds judicious and commonsensical.

Kosner concludes by suggesting that Wikipedia adopt a similar standard.^[5]

Add any Wikipedia discussions on tagging Jewish identity to this table. For anyone interested in discussing or changing identity guidelines, it's helpful to become familiar with prior discussions on the topic. The Sitewide forum column indicates when a discussion was done via a sitewide-consensus forum. Either the forum's acronym is entered, or it is left blank when it is a local consensus.

• Anti-Semite and Jew, an essay by Jean-Paul Sartre on anti-Semitism, its motivations and manifestations, focusing on Judaism as a category of fantasy projected in the thought of an antisemite

Wikipedia foundational policies

• Verifiability, which does not demand inclusion of information simply because it exists
• Reliable sources
• Neutral point of view, which requires due weight
• Biographies of living persons policy, which sets strict requirements for sourcing, due weight, privacy, and emphasis for living individuals in all Wikipedia spaces

• The Wikipedia manual of style