# Jewish ethnicity vs. Jewish religion **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 24, 2003, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634 "2003-07-24T15:16:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/21 "2003-07-25T03:03:41Z")
Sampiro, I think EVERY Jewish sect would recognize you as a Jew, based on what you just posted. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/22 "2003-07-25T03:34:17Z")
Except for maybe the Reform, who might say that because your mother raised you as a Christian (I’m assuming), and you don’t have any real connection to Judaism, you’re not Jewish. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/23 "2003-07-25T03:52:31Z")
No maybe about it. Not Jewish by Reform standards. ---
**Author:** ![stick\_monkey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@stick\_monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stick_monkey)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/24 "2003-07-25T12:38:14Z")
[Everything you never wanted to know about Judaism](http://www.jewfaq.org) and then some. To answer the OP. Judaism is a bit of an anachronism in modern society. It exists as a distinct religion, race (meaning people of common ancestry), nation, government, language, alephbet, math, and education system. Judaism can imply a lot of things, and those things may or may not be correct, depending on the individual. It’s really more than can be explained in a simple way. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/25 "2003-07-25T12:56:35Z")
I think whether or not Sampiro has been circumsized is material to such a decision. ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/26 "2003-07-25T13:00:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bryan Ekers \* > \*\*I think whether or not Sampiro has been circumsized is material to such a decision. \*\* No, it’s not. An uncircumcised Jew is still a Jew (albeit one requiring circumcision [if a male, of course 🙂]) Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/27 "2003-07-25T13:06:21Z")
Well, I _know_ he’s still a Jew, but his ability to participate in certain rituals is limited, is it not? ---
**Author:** ![zev\_steinhardt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/97f17d/32.png) [@zev\_steinhardt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zev_steinhardt)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/28 "2003-07-25T13:33:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Bryan Ekers \* > \*\*Well, I _know_ he’s still a Jew, but his ability to participate in certain rituals is limited, is it not? \*\* Yes, he is barred from some rituals (the Passover sacrifice being the most notable one). But nonetheless, he is still a Jew. Zev Steinhardt ---
**Author:** ![dreamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@dreamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dreamer)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2003, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/29 "2003-07-25T23:29:35Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Eve \* > \*\*Well, actually, that would make you a “former Jew who converted to Christianity.” Nothing wriong with that, but you are not a Jew, “completed” or otherwise. \*\* No, Jesus was a Jew and he is the CHRIST and is still a Jew. I am not a “former Jew”, I am a Jew with the belief in Jesus as the messiah. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/30 "2003-07-26T00:50:16Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dreamer \* > \*\*I am not a “former Jew”, I am a Jew with the belief in Jesus as the messiah. \*\* Ethnically, you’re a Jew, sure, but you don’t practice Judaism anymore. ---
**Author:** ![dreamer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6bbea6/32.png) [@dreamer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dreamer)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/31 "2003-07-26T01:41:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Captain Amazing \* > \*\*Ethnically, you’re a Jew, sure, but you don’t practice Judaism anymore. \*\* Actually I still do to some extent. I was brought up doing certain things and celebrating certain days and I feel it’s still part of my life to do those things. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/32 "2003-07-26T01:51:51Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by dreamer \* > \*\*Actually I still do to some extent. I was brought up doing certain things and celebrating certain days and I feel it’s still part of my life to do those things. \*\* Well, yeah, sure. I didn’t mean to imply that you didn’t. What I meant was, to the extent that you believe that Jesus was a god, that’s not a Jewish belief. ---
**Author:** ![antechinus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/fbc32d/32.png) [@antechinus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antechinus)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/33 "2003-07-26T02:46:33Z")
Thanks for your explanation **tomndebb**. The race/ethnicity aspect is the part I can never work out. I am still unclear. There are Jewish people from all over the world, that ‘look’ totaly different: Africa - dark skinned and dark curly hair, Europe - pale skinned with lighter hair, Middle eastern - brown skin and dark hair. Without using mythology, how can these people all be considered the one race? The other alternative is that one subset of Jewish people are Jewish simply by lineage and the rest are Jewish by choice. But how it be that lineage defines Jewish? A lineage from whom? This definition sounds as if it is mixed up in mythology. Also, with so much interbreeding through contact with other people, a race is not clearly defined as this definition would suggest. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/34 "2003-07-26T03:18:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by antechinus \* > \*\* > Without using mythology, how can these people all be considered the one race? > \*\* Well, just because Chinese Jews and English Jews look different, for example, doesn’t mean they can’t have a common ancestor, and, in theory, that common ancestor is Jacob. But it’s a lot more of a tribal identity than a racial or ethnic one. So, yeah, some people are “Jews by choice”, or descended from them, but they’re just as much Jews as the purist bred Kohen. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/35 "2003-07-26T03:24:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Without using mythology, how can these people all be considered the one race? As I mentioned in this thread and noted in more detail in the other thread to which I linked, the use of the word _race_ to describe Jews is not the same meaning as the use of race to categorize people by skin color or eye shape. The word race has had several analogous meaning over the years. In one definition, it indicated all the people who were descended from a common ancestor, real or legendary. In terms of the Jews, they were the race of Abraham. The Irish were called the Milesian race because they traced their legendary ancestry back to Mil (or Milesius) and his sons. The Romans were the race of Romulus. This usage of the word was the standard meaning for a long time. It picked up an analogous meaning of “all the people of a culture” over time. You can find references, for example, to the British Race even though the wide mixture of Celts, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Normans, and Norse (with the occasional input from smaller groups) is well known to people with only a modest grasp of history and no single individual has ever been considered the “Father” of Britain. In the middle of the 18th century, Linnaeus began categorizing all living things in nature and he did not stop when he reached humanity. When he needed a word to use to identify his four major divisions, he siezed on the word race. Blumenbach, following Linnaeus by a few years, continued that usage and divided the world into five specific groups. From Blumenbach and his sucessors, the word passed into general usage to indicate “one of the _x_ large divisions of humanity,” (where _x_ has ranged from three to sixty depending on who did the counting). So most people, today, have grown up using the word race to indicate the perceived differences between Europeans and Africans and East Asians, etc. However, the older meaning of race has not disappeared. The word race to mean a division of humanity is only 227 years old. The use of race to indicate all the people descending from a common (real or legendary) ancestor was not retired when the other meaning was introduced, so you can still find people discussing the “Jewish Race.” (Seumas MacManus wrote a book in the 1920s, The Story of the Irish Race, that is still a moderate seller–despite its historical inaccuracies.) As long as one realizes how one is using the word, there is no real problem with discussing the Jewish race. One does need to remember that the Jewish people of the Diaspora have intermarried with local peoples over the years and have accepted converts (“adopted” children of Abraham) from the peoples among whom they lived, giving the Jewish people a wide scope of appearances. One also needs to realize that such usage is _not_ the same as claiming that Jewish is based on the same categorization as Caucasian. The word is being used in very different ways. Given the wide confusion regarding the meaning of the word race–particularly when one does not know one’s audience or their level of education, I suspect that avoiding the word race to describe _any_ group is the most prudent course of action. OF course, others will still use the word, so you need to be aware of what they intended when they wrote it (and how informed _they_ were–people _do_ misuse the word). ---
**Author:** ![Eva\_Luna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e495f1/32.png) [@Eva\_Luna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eva_Luna)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/36 "2003-07-26T03:31:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tomndebb \* > **One also needs to realize that such usage is _not_ the same as claiming that Jewish is based on the same categorization as Caucasian. The word is being used in very different ways.** [nitpicky hijack] I always do a double-take upon seeing the word Caucasian applied in the U.S. English-language sense; to me, its first meaning is the indigenous inhabitants of the Caucasus mountain range. But I’m probably just a weirdo in that respect. Gives me problems deciding how to fill out statistical forms. ---
**Author:** ![milroyj](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a88e57/32.png) [@milroyj](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/milroyj)\ **Post date:** [July 26, 2003, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/37 "2003-07-26T03:39:46Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Noone Special \* > **I don’t have a link or a reference, but I recall stories of a study of genotypes some time back that examined Iraqis and Polocks - both Jewish and non-Jewish.** You do realize that your term for people of Polish descent is considered inflammatory, right? ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/38 "2003-07-27T07:35:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by milroyj \* > \*\*You do realize that your term for people of Polish descent is considered inflammatory, right? \*\* No, I didn’t. Had I realized that, I would never have used the term. So 1. Appologies all around ☹ 2. What is the short form used to describe _“a person of Polish descent?”_ ---
**Author:** ![antechinus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/fbc32d/32.png) [@antechinus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antechinus)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 10:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/39 "2003-07-27T10:46:05Z")
Can I just clarify this, as it seems the definition of ‘race’ is the root of confusion about **Jewish ethnicity vs. Jewish religion**. Is the following right?.. The definition of **race** as it applies to Jewish ethnicity, is an ‘older usage’ definition of _lineage to a common ancester_, rather than the modern dictionary definition, which is: _3. Ethnology: a subdivision of a stock, characterised by a more or less unique combination of physical traits which are transmitted in descent._ There would have been a Jewish race for a period at one time, as there was a Saxon race, ancient Egyptian race or race of Romulus, but today the Jewish race exists only as a mythological concept. **tomndebb** It was your link to your pevious post that prompted me to seek clarification on this. [This interesting article](http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_748264.htm) discusses a study that says "Physical features like skin colour and hair type are unreliable guides to a person’s genetic ancestry, according to a major study that further undermines the popular concept of ‘race’. So the idea of race is even more nebulous than just a collection of physical traits. As **tomndeb’s** [link](http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=10801975) says: "_Jewish and Middle Eastern non-Jewish populations were not statistically different_. In summary: Jewish ethnicity is mythological. True? **noone special** do you have a cite on “far many more Jews than Europeans carry blood type ‘A’ (yours truly included)”. This sounds very similar to the beliefs of nazi Germans about themselves. This is the sort of thing that confuses people. Arent many Jewish people from Europe anyway? ---
**Author:** ![Noone\_Special](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/noone_special/32/2863_2.png) [@Noone\_Special](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Noone_Special)\ **Post date:** [July 27, 2003, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634/40 "2003-07-27T12:00:00Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by antechinus \* > \*\* > **noone special** do you have a cite on “far many more Jews than Europeans carry blood type ‘A’ (yours truly included)”. This sounds very similar to the beliefs of nazi Germans about themselves. This is the sort of thing that confuses people. Arent many Jewish people from Europe anyway? \*\* I admit that this particular datum was **not** checked by me before posting. It was more of an anecdotal observation on my part. Dangerous!!!:eek: Now I’ve checked and it appears that I was wrong… and that I (and many others of my peer group) have A-type blood because we originally (i.e., 3-4 generations back) hark from parts of Europe where A-type is relatively common. Jews from areas where A is NOT common appear to have the same (lower) rate of A-type blood as the local population. My Bad ☹ Reminder to self: check before you post; check before you post; check before you post… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/jewish-ethnicity-vs-jewish-religion/190634.md?page=3)