First I would like to say that I have been part of M-A for two years. This is just an alternate account. Second this topic is not made to offend anyone, but was made out of my curiosity.

Earlier today, I was talking with some friends, and then the conversation turned to "heritage." We all stated our background except for two of my friends( we will call them Joe and John.) Joe stated that he was Russian and Swedish, and John stated that he was German. In the opinion of some, Joe would be half jewish and John would be full. Both Joe and John have no connection with being Jewish, yet are still labeled as jews by society.

Since Judaism is not a race, why is it that one cannot disassociate their "jewish label." We do not live in the Third Reich where you were "Jewish" if one grandparent was Jewish, so why is it that people cannot identify as Jewish or non-jewish? Why is it that people who convert to Judaism are sometimes referred to as "not real jews."

Can someone please elucidate these subjects?


I do not want a flame war of any kind, nor do I want this topic to be locked without a sufficient answer.I believe this topic is Symposium material and if someone thinks otherwise feel free to move it to the tavern.


For those who wish to answer and read my post, I thank you.

Judaism is a religion, the Jews are a race.

That was exactly the response I did not want. The religion part I understand, but the jews are not a race, and even if they were you showed no evidence.

To anyone else who answers this question, please take more than 10 seconds to think of an answer. Regardless of your opinion, please provide evidence.

Technically, the Jews are part of the Semitic race. Jews and Arabs actually share the same lineage. They're like two cousins that don't get along, really.

To Viral, my friend is a "german jew." I thought the euro jews were descended from the Khazars, who were not semitic.....

truthfully I do not think you will arrive at a satisfactory answer as there debate as to exactly what "race" is, some going as far as to doubt its existence as a meaningful classification at all

but I would say nation would be the most accurate description and that the Ashkenazi (the type you are most familiar with, ones with the phenomenal IQs that win the Nobel Prizes and run everything) are a definite ethnicity

you may also want to note that according to Jewish law, even atheist or apostate Jews are still considered to be Jews (so I think that goes to show they recognized the importance of maintaining the bloodline)

Your friend's family are most likely converts. The only real ethnic Jews are the ones of Middle Eastern origin with their roots being traced back to Northern Africa...which is where the Semitic tribes originated from. Those Jews who have little to no resemblance to the physical characteristics of a Jew are usually converts or Jews who have procreated with non-Jewish ethnicities throughout the centuries.

To Einvolk, I don't believe in races at all. I believe that humans created the concept of race during the colonial ages(IE White, Black) and then the concept of race was expounded upon by nationalists and Nordicists etc.

I do not really care about Jewish law. People can consider one something to suite their own ends. I care about why non-Jews consider certain people Jewish.

I guess this might just come down to personal definition of specific terms and one's perspective on the meaning of words.....

To Viral, what about people like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ehrlich

Although he is German, he is still considered Jewish.

If European Jews are considered converts, why does society state that they are still Jewish? When one stops practicing Christianity or Islam or Buddhism or most religions, they religious title ceases affiliation with the one who practiced that religion. It seems that this is not the case with Judaism....

Judaism as a whole (both religiously and culturally) is very complicated to explain. Being Jewish is like being part of the Mafia...once you join, you can never leave. It'll always be with you. No matter what. This, in turn, is very convenient for them...because they can always play the race card when someone discriminates against them. Being Jewish is the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. Irrelevant to the original post, I know. I'm just stating the major upside to being Jewish. But like I said, it's hard to explain.

But then there is the major downside for Jews who don't identify as "jewish." So ultimately, I would say that it just comes down to one's meaning of the word.

It seems that "jew" can be many things, a race, culture, ethnicity, heritage, religion, derogatory comment, etc that all the meanings conflict and hence confuse many people and lead to debate over what "jew" actually means or is....

Viral, you state that once you become/born Jewish(everyone has so many different explanations to how one is Jewish) yet you say it is complicated? Can you even explain it? If you cannot, why do you believe it?

It's complicated to explain because, like you said, everyone has a different reason why they are Jewish...either because they were born one, converted to the religion, etc. But since their culture is intertwined with their religion, it is hard to distinguish. Even the most secular Jews will still adhere to one or two Jewish customs/traditions...no Jew I've ever met is completely distant from their culture. A former co-worker of mine who is an atheist Jew ate pork, didn't keep kosher and his girlfriend is Roman Catholic, yet he still followed some of the guidelines of Judaism...such as celebrating Jewish holidays like Passover and Yom Kippur. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. There probably are Jews who do not identify with Jewish culture at all, but they are a minority.

The reason why Jews are historically seen as a race is because supposedly God chose them as his people of the land that is now Israel. And so that exclusion for those people there tends to put the race label on from the Biblical context.

Why are we talking about race at all, if Joe and John are not Jewish by race? Surely the OP is talking about whether these two fine, upstanding people can shake off the appearance of their Jewishness, to which I would say:
1. Don't wear a big black hat and shave off your beard
2. Stop complaining about shit all the time and don't be greedy
3. If applicable, get a nose job
4. Don't get circumsized
5. Eat pork, pussies

Joke post, or ignored my first post which stated that "Both Joe and John have no connection with being Jewish." Which is it?

Well if I don't get any more decent answers by tomorrow I am deleting/closing this topic.

I say I'm 3/4 Azhkenazi Jew, 1/4 Russian ethnically, but that's about it. My family celebrates any holiday within the Russo-Judeo-American cultural sphere, including Orthodox Easter, Yom Kippur, Christmas, Hannukah, but primarily the Russian/Soviet version of the New Year, though we obviously stress the Russo-Judaic ones more.

We are completely secular and I am a rather vocal atheist. It makes sense to call me a Jew in the sense that my parents and grandparents claim Ashkenazi Jewish heritage. I don't know what this means regarding my ethnic relationship to other Jewish groups such as the Sephardi.

Strongly-religious Jews disgust me (as do strongly-pious flocks in general), but the more moderate ones often merely make me raise my eyebrow.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the thing that you have to be born by a jewish mother to be a "born jew". Thus if a catholic woman and a jewish man concieves a child, the child will not be considered a "born jew" by the community, but if a catholic man and jewish woman have a child, it will be?
Or maybe I've confused it with something else?

I was trying to make sense of what you are asking. They have no genetic Jewish heritage, right? Then the only way to stop being jewish is to stop acting as such, right? You have to be clear in what you're trying to find out.

@ OP: Have you read the Wikipedia article Who is a Jew? It seems most of your questions are answered there. Short version: It depends on who you ask. Historically, the definition of Jews as a tribe connected by traceable bloodlines has been in the forefront in traditional Jewish law, although you could always join the tribe as someone born outside of it. To count as a fully active Jew, however, you also had to practice Judaism. This is consistent with the old view that God made a bond with one people and made it dependent upon a set of rules that this people was expected to follow.

Since the Haskalah (the Jewish Enlightenment) other definitions have partially been adopted, transforming the definition of being Jewish from being mainly determined by bloodline to voluntarily belonging to a community in Liberal and Reform Judaism. The answer to your original question therefore depends on whom you ask: in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism you can never entirely cease to be a Jew if your mother was Jewish; in Liberal and Reform Judaism you can. But this is only the short answer; Jewish law itself distinguishes several degrees of "Jewishness". Personally, if I was Jewish, I'd be more sympathetic to the Reform Judaism definition, since this position makes Jewishness a matter of religion only, one that I could join or leave of my own free will (if there is such a thing).

One thing is for sure: you can disregard external definitions, i.e. definitions on who is a Jew by non-Jews.

Okay, since I evidently didn't elaborate enough, I shall do so now.

Judaism is a religion, and a pracitioner of it would be called a Jew. So in one way, I suppose you can "become" a Jew.

However, there is a Jewish ethnicity. While the Hebrew thing is somewhat debated, the Ashkenazi are very much a legitimate culture, with their own language, Yiddish. If you are born of Ashkenazi parents, you're not going to be able to stop being ethnically Jewish any more than a person can stop being Italian or Slavic or Spanish. You don't necessarily have to identify as a Jew, or practice the religion, but it's part of your blood.

Yes, agreed. This whole "I don't believe in races" thing is quite silly from a scientific stand point, people are different and genetics have decided that some people are different from each other, why people don't acknowledge differences I will never understand...

On a side note:

Irony?

Wikipedia:




Worn-out humor.

A summary would seem like:

-Judaism is a religion, a jew is one who is one of this religion
-The jews are multiple ethnicities, and ones who are from these ethnicities can be considered jews by ethnicity, even if one jew has nothing to do with an another jew by ethnicity, since (so it seems for what ive read from this thread, im no expert) there are many ethnicities
-The ethnicity-judaism(s) is of course an artificial seclusion made by religion for their collective (bastardly, i say) purposes.
-All of the above is not well and clearly defined, therefore leading to endless definitions of the jews, and propably is the reason why non-ethnic jews can be thought to be jews by ethnicity by someone.

I didnt take time to read the thread well, nor gave much thought to my writing since my brain has been stormed by this and that recently and is not in shape. But wouldnt this seem reasonable?

PS: I hate this kind of religious collectivism. Truly makes me sick.

you have to admit it allowed them to become powerful both individually and as a group

Nazis did the same. Brainwashing and binding people under illusional dogmas for gaining power and control that the group does not deserve, does not get any respect from me. The three great monotheistic religions have all been very successfull at advancing their powers, with judaism having a "nazi-tactic" of ethnic collectivism and the "we are this one thing", while christianity spent its time spreading to every corner and using tyranny and oppression in effective forms.

Muslims follow a religion, but their race depends on the country the originate from! How can Pakistani's be the same race as someone from the Sudan ...Its on a ifferent continent, same goes for Christianity, England and the US. Not the same race!!

Jews are an ethnoreligious entity.

The issues of monotheism and imperialism aside, it makes me sick hearing of ethnic collectivism as "nazi-tastic". It's a malicious strawman aimed at peoples with their own interests at heart (something accepted as the norm until the past century or so), half the time. Given this is a universally applicable principle, I fail to see how it's evil/"nazi-tastic". If you meant that forcibly displacing another race in order to establish a living space for one's own race is "nazi-tastic" then you're wrong there, because it's not like the Nazis were the first, as ambitious as they were. Questionable and debatable as the practise is for some, the Nazi comparison is as irrelevant as most such comparisons are, IMHO. People don't seem to look before WW2 for a moral reference point.

Furthermore, there are the pitfalls of referring to one group of people in history (e.g. the Nazis) as a reference point for 'evil', especially given all the struggles documented since early human history. Also it succumbs to the moral polarity reminiscent of monotheistic doctrines. Not that I condone systematic genocide, not according to my own value-system anyway.

Judaism is a religion, not a race.

*claps*

But there is a Jewish identity, via ethnic groups (of varying admixture) like Askenazim, Sephardim and so on.

It's a pretty pointless argument. Should a Japanese guy consider himself American if he was born in America and has no connection to Japanese culture? Or should he be considered Japanese because he has the obvious look of one. There's no proof of you being any race, except from what your parents and grandparents tell you because it's just passed on through generations. Does it really matter? People have found different things to group themselves into, in medieval times societies were grouped by religion, now it's by nations, thousands of years ago it was tribes. In the next 100 years people will group themselves according to the music they listen to.

The question you need to ask yourself is why you feel the need to work out your friends' identities? Does it bother you that they are either considered German or Jewish? All that matters is the associations they feel themselves a part of. There's no clear answer.

The person that pointed out that Jews are a race, Judaism is a religion is correct. Much like Arabs are a race, and Islam is a religion. They're all still groups though that were created once upon a time. It's an "us against them" mentality that is common in human nature no matter who you are.

Osmium is spot on with his post as well.

Also, I can't help but feel this discussion was started as part of a biased anti-religion agenda, which is clearly evident from your posts.

I'm a Jew myself, and I agree with The_Beast_in_Black (second post in the thread).I'm agnostic as far as my religious beliefs, and I go to synagogue only rarely, but because of my heritage (Ashkenazi), I still consider myself a Jew.

My friend is a jew, and like you, he has been trying to lose the steryotypes automatically placed upon him by A-holes. I think that if you listen to metal( and dress like it), the whole "stupid jew" remarks will become virtully obselete. My friend's problem is that he is your basic jew and he fits into those stupid ass steryotypical comments.

The Jewish question is a really complicated one.

Race wise, back in the bible days, the Hebrew kingdom consisted out of 12 tribes. After something happened (don't remember what), the country split, with the tribes of Cohen, Levi (the priest tribes) and Yehuda (Yehuda -> Yehudi -> Jew) remained in Israel, while the other tribes left. Thus, the Jewish race was "split" and broken. One of the tribes ended up in Ethiopia, while some believe that Hawaiians are one of the tribes (Aloha -> Eloeha -> Your God, in Hebrew). This means that almost everyone can be part of the Jewish race, if you look back enough.

Religion wise, one is a Jew if they converted to Judaism, or if their mother is Jewish (if the father is not Jewish the child is still a Jew, but has some restrictions, religion wise). Yemanite Jews, for example, have nothing in common, DNA wise, with other Jews, as they were converted back in the day.

Nationality wise, the Israeli government issues passports and Identification cards with the nationality categorized as "Jew", so one's nationality CAN be Jewish.

Ethnicity wise, my family was born in the Ukraine (my parents, grand parents, their grand parents, etc.), where even if one converts to Christianity from Judaism, they are still a Jew. This means that Jews were a separate group in Ukraine (and many other European/Africa/Middle Eastern countries), that was not categorized by blood or religion, but by association (you were a "Jew", that's about it), so the Jews there could be considered an ethnic group.



Finally, there have been many cases of Jews that denied their Jewishness, and this phenomenon is somewhat common (search "Self Hating Jew"), a good example for this is Dan Burros http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Burros whose case is really interesting in my opinion.



The Jewish question, in my opinion, has no answer, Jews have become their own Ethno-sociological religion, if that makes sense, and many personal interpretations exist depending on the specific situation.




aChapo

Good reply, aChapo. I think that answers quite a lot.

I concur with rexxz, good answer
are there any errors (based on your understanding, at least) in my post earlier in this thread?though the term "self-hating Jew" is tossed around too often today towards anyone who's not a hard-line Zionist, I do think your citation of Dan Borros is a great example of this odd behavior (an old Lou Grant episode dealing with this)
I would think its really not that far off from the same mentality that wiggers espouse - feeling powerless and weak, they are soon adapting the traits of their perceived physical superiors, while trying to shed the traits they see as signs of weakness (their own culture/heritage) in attempt to identify with the aggressor thereby earning credibility

Once upon a time there was a "Jewish state" (and is now again with Israel). Back then those people didn't distinguish between their religious and geopolitical existence. That is the SOURCE of the difficulty.

What makes the most sense is, as other people have said in varying degrees of specificity, that "Jewish" has more than one definition (as though two different words), a religious one and a racial one. Religion stemming from existential beliefs and race stemming from genotype. A "Jew" can be one and not the other or be both.

There are no errors. You are actually correct, once you become a Jew, you are still considered a Jew (in the Jewish synagogues eyes) even if you convert to Islam.

I just remembered something a Rabbi told me a long time ago (I haven't had anything to do with religion in few good years...). There are three types of Neshamot, or souls. An animal soul, an Goy (non Jew) soul and a Jewish soul. When one become a kosher Jew (no pun intended), your soul never leaves you. An analogy of a finger can clarify, you can lose your finger, but it will still be your finger, no matter what you do to it. So to the OP, religion wise, it is impossible to stop being Jewish, yet one could always live atheistically or covert to a different religion.

The reason why Judaism ended up as a race was because unlike the othet "monoreligions" the Jewish religion was relatively closed, so unlike Christianity/Islam, the majority of Jews were born into a community with certain geno/phenotypes and not converted.



I do not really agree with the Wigger example. Wiggers might be white people who try to be black by dressing up like them, but self hating Jews are not always that extreme/subtle. A lot of self hating Jews might not identify with the Jewish religion, but still follow a custom or two, while others, like Dan Burros were actually for the KILLING of Jews. No Wigger will support the killing of white people (unless they are that dumb). Again, I don't think you could really compare the Jewish religion to anything. It is it's own weird enigma that can barely be figured out.

It depends on what you mean by "stop".

My mom's side of her family are jews so that makes me one. Her grandparents were german and russian orthadox. My grandfather was completely fluent in Hebrew yet he sort of rejected the religion and my grandmother also rejected it, they became non-practicing.

As far as the inherit way Jews act, I know it's considered blasphemy but I understand some of the psychological ideologies Hitler had in Mein Kaumf. Some of his observations are correct. But the issue becomes that, the Jews state that this small piece of land belongs to them and that has caused a 2000+ year war and still is causing problems obviously. I'm not saying that there is going to be an armageddon or anything (who knows) but it could end up all focused on that issue which is what I believe in part to what 9/11 was about...i.e. the US supporting Isreal and the religious beliefs of the majority of the US is based on the Judao-Christian belief system.

Note, the Jews were driven out of their "land" and had nowhere to go for thousands of years, migrated to European countries and set up shop there. They realized that if they were going to be landless, that the only way to gain power was through money, and that's what ended up happening. In order for them to feel safe, they needed to get involved in some sort of business setup.

Now, people that hate jews because they are the self-proclaimed "chosen ones" I can understand why that can be annoying to many. Also, I can understand why some think they are annoying because they control some of the banking systems (and the Swiss ones back in the day; having to do in part to why there was terror reigned on them) but understand from where it comes from.

The fact is going one step further, if you want to be mad at anyone; don't be mad at the Jews or Jesus, be mad at the people that brought on the conversion and inquisitions in the past, including the Roman Catholics who were the ones that raped and pillaged in the name of this new self-proclaimed Jewish god. It wasn't Jesus' fault...it's the people who wanted to make money off of his name in order to maintain control in general.