Mrs. Plant v.2.0 would have been spitting teeth that someone converted Conservative would be married by a Reform Rabbi. 
I’m Russian/Polish/Austrian. White. Raised Jewish.
Generically speaking, I suspect not all Jews consider themselves white.
Sammy Davis Jr, for instance, probably didn’t…
I believe the reason I wondered if I was still White came from an incident in a book store in Brookline, MA.
We were married in a civil ceremony in Arkansas, so her Ex couldn’t bitch in court about our sleeping in the same apartment while she tried to regain custody of her daughter.
In between the bet din, however you spell it, the religious court that figured whether or not I could convert and the mikva, a ritual bath, we went to the bookstore that we had gone to while I courted her. It had stickers and kid stuff to buy for my step daughter.
There was a book on the Holocaust with a picture of a sculpture on the cover. Ashen covered, twisted bodies.
I realized there were millions of folks who would have ignored me an hour ago, and now wanted to kill me.
I was shaking, and in one of the few kind things she ever did for me, she took my arm and said, “Let’s go outside.”
Thanks for the insights, my peeps!
<Colbert>
I don’t see race, but people tell me I’m white, and I believe them because cops don’t pull me over once a week.
</Colbert>
My Jewish coworker in Miami was Hispanic White, a Sephardite from Colombia with light-brown hair. He said it was great in terms of looking for scholarships.
Race is essentially a political construct. In a political sense, I, my North African brother-in-law, and Jews from Ethiopia, Yemen, India and China are all the same race. Therefore, despite the face that my pale skin, blonde hair and blue eyes would automatically peg me as “white”, *they *certainly aren’t white, and as they and I are the same race, I am not white as well.
I’m good at “passing”, though.
I’m the offspring of a Russian Jewish dad and a Roman Catholic mother of German and Irish ancestry.
Mom started converting but never completed the process.
My Jewish relatives have always insisted I’m a gentile and not Jewish. My gentile relatives have always insisted I’m Jewish and not gentile. My skin color is glow-in-the-dark white.
Personally, I’d be happy to go with the designation “human” but the rest of the world takes one look at me and categorizes me as Caucasian. The usual tendency is to assume I’m a “nice Christian girl” until dad’s background comes up, at which point it’s often “Oh, I thought all along you looked Jewish”. :dubious:
So… regardless of what I may or may not think and regardless of any religion I may or may not practice and regardless of my ethnic background it seems that to the rest of society I’m white.
I’m white from my Eastern Europe and Northern Europe ancestry. I’m Jewish because my folks are, and their folks were, going backwards in time. My 23andme data pegs me as 96% Ashkenazi.
I have olive in my skin, since I tan, not burn.
But I’m white.
I’m “White” and Jewish, my daughter is “Asian” and Jewish, a friend is “Black” and Jewish. Jews come in all sorts of races and in all kinds of combination identities. Some in surprising places.
I do consider myself a minority in American culture. So if by “White” you mean, do I consider myself part of the majority in America, I would say no … of course it is quick becoming that “minorities” as a group are the majority.
Another related question that would get different answers depending on who you asked is to what degree “Jewish” is, for any particular Jew, their religion, and to what degree their ethnicity, and to what degree their cultural heritage. For most there is some combination of these partially overlapping aspects but often weighted very differently. My WAG is that cultural heritage is the largest aspect for most in America.
Although pure Ashkenazi (whatever pure means in that context), I am relatively dark-skinned and, when I had hair, it was black. When growing up, I never thought about race in that context but could hardly have doubted I was white. However, I discovered when I moved to Quebec that they don’t consider me white (we are “ethnics”, whatever the hell that means).
On census forms I always check “other” and add “human”.
Slightly off topic, but a couple I know a couple (though long since separated) who got married in Bloomington, IN. He was Greek and she a lily white American (actually of Polish background). When they got a marriage license the clerk filled in her race as “white” and his as “other”. But the other line had a blank to be filled in and the clerk filled in “white”. So she was white and he was “other white”. That has gotten quite a few laughs over the years.
I’ve always resisted the concept of being “born Jewish.” That would make it something immutable, like a race. Rather, I was “raised Jewish,” but have been an atheist since the age of 13. Although there are black Jews, Asian Jews, and all sorts of ethnic Jews, most are white.
Then how do you define the many, many people who define themselves as Jews, yet are atheists?
I know a few people who trace their ancestry back to the Cochin Jews who emigrated to the UK by way of various other places, and they largely seem to think of themselves as Indian (they look like Indian people, certainly).
And the weed!
Alessan: You are using the term “race” in a way that is different from the way most people would use it.
“Jew” is not a race, in the modern sense of that term any more than “Irish” is a race (although people used to refer to them that way) or “American” is a race. Obama and I are both Americans, but we are not the same race. You and Ethiopian Jews are the same religion, but you are not the same race.
Think of it less like a “race” and more like a “tribe”.
You can’t (easily) change your “race” because the definition of “race” is set by society as a whole and is based on physiological characteristics. In the US, for example, any amount of visible Black ancestry makes you “Black”, whether you like it or not.
However, who is in a “tribe” is a function of the rules of the tribe, and people can (and do) leave or join the tribe by the simple expedient of conversion. If you don’t convert, you are assumed to retain the tribal identity of your parents (in most forms of Judaism, that of your mother).
I think he knows that and he’s manking a wry jest based on it. 
Slight hijack but, I thought thought the whole eating babies thing was pretty much discredited before 1750. Have people actually said that to you, or is that hyperbole?
The sneaky/money quotes I believe, unfortunately.
Hyperbole, I sort of stopped listening to them.
Not many, but certainly surprising.
However it’s not quite that simple. There are genetic traits (Tay-Sachs gene, BRAC1 for example) that are found at higher rates in decedents of Jewish Ashkenazis. There is a strong genetic component linking the group together that goes beyond geography. So, perhaps race is the right word, but oversimplifying to just shared religion isn’t quite right either.