# why do jews get a pass when it comes to racism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 6, 2011, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370 "2011-04-06T06:35:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 20
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/381 "2011-04-18T03:37:25Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > **Argent** , I don’t know how it can be made any clearer: there is no mandate in Judaism for belief in God; there is a mandate against a belief in another God. Hey, He [admits](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Exodus20.html) to being “a [jealous](http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Bible/Exodus34.html) God.” But these mandates don’t exist in a vacuum. The reason there is a mandate to not bow down to another god is because the person who wrote that mandate believed that this particular God existed. If this God doesn’t exist, which is what atheists believe, there is no one “there” to be jealous. Also, the fourth commandment says “for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation _of those who reject me_” It seems to me that the phrase “of those who reject me” can apply equally to atheists and to people who believe in other gods. > [@](#): > > 14 For thou shalt bow down to no other god; for HaShem, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous G-d; > > 15 lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go astray after their gods, and do sacrifice unto their gods, and they call thee, and thou eat of their sacrifice; > > 16 and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go astray after their gods, and make thy sons go astray after their gods. > > 17 Thou shalt make thee no molten gods. You can easily claim to strictly follow the above if you simply believe that some other god exists, if you (1) Don’t bow down to him, (2) Don’t make sacrifices to him and (3) Don’t make any molten version of him. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/382 "2011-04-18T03:40:22Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > It’s not happening in this thread. But it does happen all the time, and people who claim atheism _and_ claim to practice Judaism get to enjoy all the benefits of both and none of the social downsides of either. It seems like a cop-out to me. Do have any clue as to the social downside of being atheist? Do you really think I get high-fives for it? I get practically spit on by most people. But my religious community values me and doesn’t see me as hypocritical. I am doing my best to be true to my beliefs and navigate this world. Ton suggest they are just for kicks and not sincere is insulting. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/383 "2011-04-18T03:48:33Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > It’s not happening in this thread. So go take your assault elsewhere. I love how the Jews here have shown their intellectual capacity and uniform respect for each other in what was _originally_ a thread designed to put down Jews and potentially divide them. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/384 "2011-04-18T03:52:26Z")
> [@CitizenPained](#): > > a thread designed to put down Jews _and potentially divide them_. (Emphasis mine) Wow. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/385 "2011-04-18T03:55:03Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > people who claim atheism _and_ claim to practice Judaism get to enjoy all the benefits of both and none of the social downsides of either. It seems like a cop-out to me. Hah. $$ in synagogue dues every year + $$ expenses of Jewish holidays $14k/year Day School tuition (luckily I only pay $2k/yr, thanks to a scholarship) $$ in donations to the local beth midrash Volunteering at Jewish Family Services Schleeping the kid to Jewish events Oh – that reminds me – paying for and figuring out transport for Jewish camps Studying of Torah, Talmud, etc. Jewish ed. classes Keeping up with Israeli news Keeping (some degree of) kosher This bitch of tradition we call Passover (gives spring cleaning a new meaning!) Taking off work and losing wages during holidays For others - bar/bat mitzvah education, expenses, planning, etc. Participating in threads like these Yeah, I’m _pretty sure_ it would be easier to convert to Christianity and call it a night. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/386 "2011-04-18T03:56:31Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > (Emphasis mine) > > Wow. Yeah. Jews have been marrying non-Jews for centuries. It can be a sore spot. But hey! Look who ended up arguing in this thread. Gentiles v. Jews. tsk tsk ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/387 "2011-04-18T04:02:52Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Could you please explain how it’s possible to be an atheist Jew but not be a Jew who believes in Christ? This is semantically messy, but in Jewish tradition, worshipping a false god puts you outside the tribe in a way that simply not believing doesn’t. This is a convention adhered to by the state of Israel. Ethnically Jewish converts to Christianity (and that includes fraudulent paradigms like Jews for Jesus) are not permitted the right of return because they have chosen to leave the tribe. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/388 "2011-04-18T04:06:53Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > It’s not happening in this thread. But it does happen all the time, and people who claim atheism _and_ claim to practice Judaism get to enjoy all the benefits of both and none of the social downsides of either. It seems like a cop-out to me. What social downsides do you believe are being avoided? In the US, I would argue that being an atheist has a hell of a lot more social downside than being Jewish. Antisemitism isn’t socially acceptable anymore, but atheists can be villified with impunity. Listen to right wing radio sometime, or watch Fox News. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/389 "2011-04-18T04:12:11Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > In the US, I would argue that being an atheist has a hell of a lot more social downside than being Jewish. I believe **Argent** was talking about the upsides of being an atheist in the social circles that the posters of this board likely hang around. I don’t think he meant that there are upsides to being an atheist in the broader US society. ---
**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:** [April 18, 2011, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/390 "2011-04-18T04:16:14Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > … Christianity is idolatry in Judaism. Ok. Why is that a bad thing? Who says? Just because the Torah says it, with no higher authority to believe in, you’re going to decide to follow that rule? Basing your life decisions on orders from a book, if you don’t believe that book to be divinely inspired, seems very foolish. In other words, you’re just obeying something written down by some shepherd in the desert thousands of years ago (if you don’t believe a deity inspired the words) - uh…why again?.. _You_ may think it is very foolish but that is indeed what the religion is all about: yes, “because the Torah says it.” You get it now. Few Jews would give a rat’s ass about convincing you that it is not foolish and few will be swayed by your calling their belief system “foolish”. It’s our belief system not yours. Enjoy yours, we’ll appreciate ours. I respect yours; a small shame that you don’t ours. We’ll get over it. Now again many many many Jews, especially observant ones, _do_ believe. For them the Law _is_ divinely inspired. But again, those who believe do not generally care much about what other Jews believe. Why? Ultimately I think because it is not much different than in those early days: it is about belonging. Belonging to your family, to your community, to a cultural tradition that you feel has value. Those of us who consider ourselves modern secular Jews, still see value in belonging and value in the texts. We do not read them as literal histories, we read them as trying to express greater truths. Tell me something though - do you believe that all men are created equal? do you believe that there should be freedom of worship? do you believe in the rule of law? The words were written down by a few farmers and yet Christian, Muslims, Jews, Jainists, Wiccans, atheists and agnosotics … all make their decisions based on the rules written down in these papers and in the books of laws that followed, interpreting them, and in the values that those words espouse, without _needing_ to believe they were divinely inspired. Foolish too? **Polerius** I am absolutely sure that the people who wrote the Torah believed in HaShem. And that through history the vast majority of Jews have. I am pretty sure still do. Again, in my own way I do. Those statements however inform naught about what we are talking about. The worry wasn’t whether or not other Jews believed in HaShem so much as that they did not decide to believe something else. You could belong without believing; you couldn’t belong while worshiping something else. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/391 "2011-04-18T04:22:28Z")
(The “parable” below is an attempt to explain how I see things discussed in this thread. I hope it doesn’t offend people’s sensibilities or religion, because no offense is intended. I’m just trying to come up with something that tries explains things from my point of view) **The three-legged dog club** There once was a club whose first rule was 1. The only people who can join this club are those who own dogs with exactly three legs, no more, no less. For centuries, people with three-legged dogs joined this club, and things were great. At some point, the number of people who wanted to have three-legged dogs started to diminish, since it’s so hard to take care of them and raise them, and so the numbers of people joining this club started to diminish. So, some club members started thinking that maybe they should start accepting people with four-legged dogs. After all, if looked at from the right angle, any dog can appear to have three legs, and the first rule of the club doesn’t unequivocally state from which angle the dog should be looked at when determining how many legs it has. As a result, the club started accepting more members, and the numbers of the club did not decline. There was of course a splinter-group of three-legged purists, who, based on their reading of the first rule decided that they would never accept people with four-legged dogs. But they were considered too extreme by most, and the majority of the three-legged club members welcomed anyone who had a four-legged dog into the club. One day, someone asked “Can I join if my dog has five legs? If you look at him from the right angle, it appears that he has three legs”. The response was “Of course not, you are clearly violating the first rule of the club”, to which he replies “Yes, but so do four-legged dogs, but you still let them in”. The response to that was unanimous: “It’s our club, so we make up our own rules about who can join”. Moral of the story: Yes people from a club can make their own rules about who can join, but if they are not following the public rules of the club but some other more complex rules, they shouldn’t point to the public rules of the club when someone asks why they can’t join, since the public rules of the club are clearly being violated by people that are members of the club. ---
**Author:** ![Argent\_Towers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e8c25b/32.png) [@Argent\_Towers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Argent_Towers)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/392 "2011-04-18T04:26:43Z")
Man, that is a damn good analogy. Thanks for explaining my problem with their reasoning, and doing it in allegorical form, no less. ---
**Author:** ![FinnAgain](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/finnagain/32/12500_2.png) [@FinnAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FinnAgain)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/393 "2011-04-18T04:30:15Z")
Again, so what? The rules seem arbitrary and/or contradictory to you, but it’s what Jews have decided on. What is the point of your argument? That you don’t agree? We get that. But so what? ---
**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:** [April 18, 2011, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/394 "2011-04-18T04:43:55Z")
**Finn** , I am reminded of an old old joke - A Catholic man comes out of the Vatican and sees two vendors across from each other. One is selling huge expensive crosses and the other is selling Stars of David, smaller but for just as much money. He shakes his head, buys a big expensive cross, and then, as he walks away, tells the vendor of the Stars of David that maybe he should find another place for his stall. He leaves. Says the one vendor, Moishe, to the other: “Hey Schmuel, how you like how that guy tries to tell us how to run our business?” ---
**Author:** ![Zeriel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/58956e/32.png) [@Zeriel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeriel)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/395 "2011-04-18T04:56:06Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > I guess I’m just really sick of having people shit all over me when I say that, when I look out across the ocean or look at the structure of some plant’s leaves or see photos of galaxies in space, I think there has to be a supreme architect of it all, some divine and intelligent force - maybe one far beyond our understanding or any kind of label, but still something. And people tell me what a fucking naive, childish, ignorant, backwards moron I must be for holding a belief like this (that there is a _reason_ for the beauty of the universe). And then I see people claiming membership in a religion - not a culture but an actual religion - and then they tell me that they’ve stripped out all the divinity of the religion, all of the belief in a higher power, but they still believe they’re “practicing” the religion. To me these individuals want to have the best of both worlds. They want to be able to get the intellectual and social cachet of claiming atheism, and they want to get whatever personal fulfillment they get from practicing the tenets of a religion (but without any divine reason for doing so.) And I resent it. Okay, so who in this thread has done that. Man, I’m sympathetic from the other end (I get shit on by my mom for not being Catholic and not believing in Jesus, AND shit on by my fellow Buddhists for believing in a deity in general) but that’s not really an excuse to get het up on these folks. Someone brought up fraternities earlier in the thread. My own particular one DOES have a lot of rules, tenets, and rituals, despite not having the benefit of a divine reason. If people want to use Judaism as a social group because they’re comfortable in the ritual, and the arbitrators of Judaism (that is, each individual rabbi–there’s a Jewish story to the effect of "There were three rabbis at Yeshiva, debating a finer point of the Torah, and they grew so heated that God noticed. So he came down from heaven, and said ‘Actually, the verse is intended to be read as follows…’ but at that moment one of the rabbis said ‘Settle down, you only have one vote, same as the rest of us.’ ") say “that’s fine by us”, why does it matter? ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/396 "2011-04-18T04:57:54Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > Thanks for attempting to explain - although I think the heart of your explanation is that since the majority of Jews supposedly won’t accept a “Jewish Christian,” that’s why you can’t be one. Circular reasoning, in other words. Do you know what you call a leader with no followers? A guy on a walk. Like I said – you want to start your own religion, fine by me. Just don’t try to corrupt my culture in the process. You got personal in your post, so now it’s my turn. > [@](#): > > Christianity is idolatry in Judaism. Ok. Why is that a bad thing? Who says? Thirteen million people. > [@](#): > > Just because the Torah says it, with no higher authority to believe in, you’re going to decide to follow that rule? Think of it as a social contract. If, at some point, Judaism fails for us - if Jewish people just drop off - then we’re done. The rules don’t matter. St. Paul clearly stated that these Nazarenes were\* not\* Jews. The covenant with God (otherwise known as “the social contract with the rest of the Jewish people”) was broken. A law is only useful if it has power. It only has power if there are enforcers. Right now, you have thirteen million enforcers of that law. Gentiles have been assaulting Judaism and have been trying to change our ways for centuries. Maybe we just don’t like it when someone else tells us how to run things. > [@](#): > > Basing your life decisions on orders from a book, if you don’t believe that book to be divinely inspired, seems very foolish. To _you_ that seems foolish. But if we thought the ideas in a book were foolish, why would we follow them? The law would cease to have validity. Like I said: Judaism stands on itself. You can’t tell Jews what is or isn’t Jewish any more than you could walk into the Oval Office and tell the President that he wasn’t the President anymore! > [@](#): > > In other words, you’re just obeying something written down by some shepherd in the desert thousands of years ago (if you don’t believe a deity inspired the words) - uh…why again? Because I love my people more than I love _your_ concept of God. That’s why. I don’t want to live in a world where Israel doesn’t exist, or little children don’t ask the Four Questions, or Seinfeld loses half of its humor, or there’s no Yiddish slang, or no one reads the Talmud, or there is no shul where I can sit and feel how tiny I am in this world. I don’t want to wake up one day and find out that Ivory’s daughter never had a bat mitzvah. I don’t want to live in a place where there are no Orthodox Jews, because without the Orthodox, how would we survive? What devout learned men do we debate with? How awful it would be if [this](http://denverkollel.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=2&Itemid=10) ceased to exist. I don’t want to live without the Chabad and their seemingly strange ways and beautiful stories. The Reform movement came out of traditional Judaism, and the Conservative was a response to the Reform. Who will keep traditions some of us find irrelevant if not the Orthodox who call us heretics? Today, we can share with our children, “That’s what we looked like two hundred years ago. And there is a place there if you want it.” If it weren’t for Orthodoxy, there would be no masorti. If it weren’t for Orthodoxy, there would be no _me_. So why do I care if they believe in God? And I don’t want to live in a place without Reconstructionist Jews, because without them, how many gays and lesbians would we have lost a few decades ago? How many children of interreligious marriages would have been lost to the wayside if it were not for the Reform movement? I don’t want to live in a world where Hebrew is a dead language again. I don’t give two dreks if _your_ God exists. \*\*I \*\*don’t want to live in a world where most of us could be annihilated because of some of the ideas perpetuated in this thread. Do you know how many Polish Jews died in the Shoah? Ninety per cent. _Ninety_. _That_ is my God, and _that_ I will fight for. > [@](#): > > I guess I’m just really sick of having people shit all over me when I say that, when I look out across the ocean or look at the structure of some plant’s leaves or see photos of galaxies in space, I think there has to be a supreme architect of it all, some divine and intelligent force - maybe one far beyond our understanding or any kind of label, but still something. And people tell me what a fucking naive, childish, ignorant, backwards moron I must be for holding a belief like this (that there is a _reason_ for the beauty of the universe). It may be historically popular to blame it on the nearest Jew, but don’t take it out on us. I’m not saying you mean to be the way you come across. We’re not overly sensitive here. But seriously. Stop. > [@](#): > > And then I see people claiming membership in a religion - not a culture but an actual religion - and then they tell me that they’ve stripped out all the divinity of the religion, all of the belief in a higher power, but they still believe they’re “practicing” the religion. You can’t determine what our religion says any more than you can [redefine](http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/religious) words in the dictionary. > [@](#): > > To me these individuals want to have the best of both worlds. They want to be able to get the intellectual and social cachet of claiming atheism, and they want to get whatever personal fulfillment they get from practicing the tenets of a religion (but without any divine reason for doing so.) Judaism has always been an intellectual pursuit. You can believe in creation and evolution in Judaism. You can argue Talmud. You can question Torah. We do not belong to a group that _requires_ blind faith; we belong to a group that _demands_ that we ask questions. > [@](#): > > And I resent it. I’m sorry you are resentful. Don’t take it out on us. > [@](#): > > The Torah refers to four sons: One wise, one wicked, one simple and one who does not know how to ask a question. What does the wise son say? “What are the testimonials, statutes and laws Hashem our G-d commanded you?” You should tell him about the laws of Pesach, that one may eat no dessert after eating the Pesach offering. > > What does the wicked son say? “What does this drudgery mean to you?” To you and not to him. Since he excludes himself from the community, he has denied a basic principle of Judaism. You should blunt his teeth by saying to him: “It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt. For me and not for him. If he was there he would not have been redeemed.” > > What does the simple son say? “What’s this?” You should say to him “With a strong hand Hashem took me out of Egypt, from the house of servitude.” > > And the one who does not know how to ask, you start for him, as the Torah says: “And you should tell your son on that day, saying ‘It is for the sake of this that Hashem did for me when I left Egypt.’” ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 5:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/397 "2011-04-18T05:09:05Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > Bolding mine. > > Did you skip that part? Nope. I included it for a reason and continued. Please re-read. There is no uniform tenet on the \*nature \*of God. For more info: > [@](#): > > Third, though the term was unknown, pluralism has characterized Jewish life and thought through the ages. This is reflected in the variety of views and attitudes of the biblical legislators, priests, prophets, historians, psalmists and Wisdom teachers, the hundreds of controversies among the rabbis of the Talmud and in the codes and responsa of their successors. The latter-day attempt to suppress freedom of inquiry and the right to dissent is basically a foreign importation into Jewish life. > > Source: [Wiki](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Judaism), which cites _Emet Ve-Emunah_: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism. ---
**Author:** ![Farmer\_Jane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Farmer\_Jane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Farmer_Jane)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 5:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/398 "2011-04-18T05:18:35Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > This is semantically messy, but in Jewish tradition, worshipping a false god puts you outside the tribe in a way that simply not believing doesn’t. This is a convention adhered to by the state of Israel. Ethnically Jewish converts to Christianity (and that includes fraudulent paradigms like Jews for Jesus) are not permitted the right of return because they have chosen to leave the tribe. I’m pretty sure [ethnic Jews of Jewish fathers](http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=98980) are allowed the Right of Return now, even if they did convert. They\*\* aren’t\*\* considered Jews by the government. Personally, I think this is a dangerous precedent since it’s pandering to the Western Religious Right, but whatever. In Israel, a person who is descended from a Jewish parent is allowed the right of return. What was good enough for Mengele is good enough for the gander, I suppose. Christians who were claiming to be Jews – not so much. ---
**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:** [April 18, 2011, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/399 "2011-04-18T05:19:38Z")
> [@Argent\_Towers](#): > > … I see people claiming membership in a religion - not a culture but an actual religion - and then they tell me that they’ve stripped out all the divinity of the religion, all of the belief in a higher power, but they still believe they’re “practicing” the religion. To me these individuals want to have the best of both worlds. They want to be able to get the intellectual and social cachet of claiming atheism, and they want to get whatever personal fulfillment they get from practicing the tenets of a religion (but without any divine reason for doing so.) And I resent it. Why do you resent it? Jews _can_ be religious and believe that the world does not require divine intervention to be. And they can see God in the structure of the universe. And they can believe in a literal interpretation of Torah or an allegorical one. And they can argue about those interpretations. And still be Jews, even righteous ones. Why does that fact offend you? On preview **CitizenPained** states it well. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [April 18, 2011, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370/400 "2011-04-18T05:20:06Z")
> [@Polerius](#): > > “It’s our club, so we make up our own rules about who can join”. Except that they aren’t trying to join; they were already members. Messianic Jews were born to the tribe as much as anyone else. If they have come to believe and espouse something the tribe considers antithetical to its identity, the tribe is of course within its rights to _cast them out_. But it’s inaccurate to describe it as if they are outsiders with no connection trying to horn in somewhere they never belonged. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370.md?page=19) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-jews-get-a-pass-when-it-comes-to-racism/577370.md?page=21)