I spoke enough about my own problems.
The fact that many Jews are outstanding makes it even harder. Many lawyers and doctors are Jewish. My own parents are scientists. :mad:
Franz Kafka made an art of his problems and anguish.
But the main part of Jewishness is Law of G-d – the Torah.
And that makes you angry?
Scientology sometimes claims that you can be a member and also Christian (or anything else). Here’s a link, note that this is an anti-Scientology source but the first relevant that came up on Google, and at least has supporting quotes.
I’d think many Lutherans would like it just fine as well.
Hey, don’t forget charoses! And challah is great too. With or without raisins.
As for gefilte fish, I figure that any food that requires red horseradish to eat is a food I’m not interested in eating.
Please correct me if I’m wrong, cmkeller, but it’s my impression that faith generally plays a lesser role in (religious) Judaism than it does in Christianity or Islam. Christians are justified by faith, and a Muslim professes belief in God and his prophet, but a good Jew is one who observes the Law - in other words, Judaism seems to be much more about how one lives than about what one believes. And while a belief in God probably forms part of the rationale for most observant Jews, a Jew could observe the Law for a complex of reasons, including cultural reasons, a desire for community, for solidarity with other Jews, to give loving support to an observant spouse, to hand on an inheritance to one’s children, etc, etc. So, even for a committed observant Jew, theistic belief need not play the central role that it does for a committed Christian or a committed Muslim.
It doesn’t actually require it. And way back when my *bubbe *made it from scratch, I loved to taste it raw. 
Of course it had all sorts of flavors that don’t come in a jar.
I’d say you could be an atheistic hindu as well. Same as jewish, being born Hindu means you’re seen as part of the religion and its also a cultural identity like jewishness is is. Not to mention theres so many schools of hinduism that certainly some of them view the gods as only metaphors or as ways to reflect and talk about psychology and personal development.
Hinduism is a belief system (or rather systems) I don’t know all that much about - it strikes me as a whole universe of various different traditions, as you say.
It’s a fair comment.
It is also worth noting that strength of religious observance isn’t directly correlated to sect - though it often is made to appear that way. That is, someone who is Orthodox Jewish isn’t necessarily more observant that someone who is Reform or Reconstructionist: they only have a different understanding of what observance requires.
The Orthodox sect places more emphasis on belief than other sects of Judaism - derived from Maimonides originally, in his “principles of faith”.
Some other sects of Judaism reject that, and hold Maimonides to be less relevant - in particular, they teach that he’s a product of his time and place, heavily influenced by Christian philosophy.
Perhaps the most divergent form of Judaism from Orthodoxy in this matter is Reconstructionist - which more or less eliminates theology from its version of Judaism.
Ask two Jews what it means to be Jewish and you’ll get three answers.
Definitely, according to Judaism, a Jew must observe hundreds of commandments – I mostly observe Sabbath and holidays, Kosher, I say prayers for food and Shma.
Orthodox Christianity has much stricter laws. Catholicism has simplified Orthodox Christian laws, like Conservative Judaism has simplified Orthodox Jewish laws. Reform Judaism and Protestant Christianity place almost no importance on observance.
Thanks all for the replies thus far.
Seems that many have pointed out that they culturally define themselves as christian, muslim, jewish, etc. based on what culture they grew up with.
I understand this point. I assumed that one identifying themselves as a religion instead of an ethnicity (i.e. “I am jewish” vs “I am Italian”) meant they followed the tenets of that particular religion. I know some folks who identify themselves as Russian Jews, and I just figured they were identifying their ethnicity and religion.
Religious and cultural I understand… But when you say ethnic, are you saying genetic (ie DNA?)
Wait… I am confused. You also mention a genetic component. If this is true, how would one who is genetically jewish leave Judaism?
Can you (or anyone) explain this?
If there is a genetic component to Judaism, that means there is a way to identify one as jewish through DNA, correct?
If this is accurate, how do genetic jews differ from other jews (or anyone else)?
I think you’re being a bit too binary here.
National identity is basically a cultural matter. A nations shares a common history, a common language, often a common or dominant religion, usually an association with a particular place or territory.
National culture is largely transmitted by inheritance - most people who are, e.g., Italian are Italian because they were born into an Italian family. So there may be a large genetic correlation. But it’s important to understand that you’re not Italian because you possess a particular gene or combination of genes; rather, you possess the gene or gene combination because you’re Italian, and this particular gene or combination is common in, or characteristic of, the Italian community.
But it’s possible to become Italian other than by inheritance. You move to Italy, you embrace Italian language, culture, values. Maybe you take out Italian citizenship. In time, you become Italian. And - let’s say you’re a couple who does this - your children, conceived, born and reared in Italy, educated in Italy, speaking Italian, etc, will certainly be accepted as Italian, even though they won’t have the “Italian genes” just mentioned.
So, yes, there may be a correlation between particular genetic characteristics and a particular nationality, but it’s not a correlation that is absolute, or required. And it’s not that the genes create the nationality, or vice versa; it’s that genes and nationality are both transmitted entirely (genes) or largely (nationality) by inheritance, so they tend to be transmitted together.
So, Judaism. A signficant component of the cultural identity of Judaism is being born to a Jewish mother. If your mother was Jewish then, so far as Jews are concerned, so are you. But that’s not the only basis for being identified as Jewish; a gentile can convert to Judaism. A convert, obviously, doesn’t have a typically Jewish genetic inheritance, and neither will their children necessarily have a typically Jewish genetic inheritance. But they are fully Jewish, as far as Jews are concerned.
Conversely, you can inherit, from a Jewish ancestor, a characteristically Jewish gene or gene combination, but not be Jewish yourself or be regarded as Jewish by Jews, if the inheritance is through the male line.
So, while there are particular genes or gene combinations that are strongly associated with being Jewish, there is no gene or combination that you have to have to be Jewish. And there is no gene or combination that, if you have it, marks you as necessarily Jewish.
You have to understand that there are many different sub-groups of Jews. These sub-groups are, obviously, very different from each other.
For example, the Ashkenazic Jews are that sub-group of Jews whose ancestors came from Eastern Europe and Russia (mostly). For centuries, these Jews were isolated from the Christians they lived among (sometimes literally, in ghettos and the ‘Pale of the Settlement’). However, they were also somewhat isolated from other Jewish groups - like the Shephardic (Jews originally from Spain), the Mizrahi (Jews from what is now the Middle East), and the Bene Israel (Jews from East Africa).
The genetic differences between these Jewish groups are far more significant that any possible similarity. One has merely to look at an Ashkenazic Jew, and a Bene Israel Jew, to see that they are not particularly “genetically similar”. One has white skin, and the other has Black skin. A genetic analysis would reveal one is more like an Eastern European and the other is more like an east African. Clearly, even assuming both shared some sort of common ancestor back in the mists of time, along the way they have absorbed through conversion and intermarriage, genetic material from the populations in which they are minorities - as they quite clearly resemble them, rather than each other.
However, they are both members of the same “tribe”, “religion” or “nation” - they are both Jews. So Judaism is not determined genetically, and cannot easily be tracked genetically.
UDS:
I would not say that’s accurate. While it is true that observance of the Law is seen as a good thing even when done for the “wrong” reasons, the theological thinking behind that is that observance of the Law is seen as a means for drawing one closer to G-d. “Because he performs the commandments not for the proper reason, he will eventually come to perform them for the proper reason” is how it’s put in the Talmud. So I’d say that theistic belief is still central. It is seen as the ultimate goal, and all else as a means to that end. One who observes without believing (and some commandments, it’s hard to imagine can be observed at all without belief - Jewish tradition expects the “Shema” to be said twice a day, which is clearly a declaration of faith on a par with what Muslims have to say) is not condemned for his lack of belief, but is encouraged to continue - because that is ultimately the path to belief, not because belief is unimportant.
It means you understand why Dr.Brown’s Black Cherry Soda and brown mustard are such a big deal. I like these things, but I don’t LIKE like them.
Does anyone have statistics on what percentage of lawyers in USA are Jewish? What percentage of Jews have PhD?
Don’t forget the medical doctors.
My psychologist is an observant Orthodox Jew. The doctor who prescribes my medicine is a Reform Jew.
Living in liberal Brooklyn, I would say that more than half of my friends and acquaintances are non-observant Jews. And they’re pretty much all proud of their Jewish heritage, even the anti-Zionists. Brooklynites tend to be sentimental about their old-country origins.
What I hate is when they slip and refer to all us gentiles as “Christians.” “It doesn’t work that way, asshole! I don’t accept the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth, DON’T call me a fucking Christian! It’s not an ethnic group, it’s a choice of whether you believe!”