If you are born Jewish, what does that mean?

JEWISH answer: JEWS ARE NOT A RACE - nor are Jews an ethnicity

You can change your religion and no longer be considered Jewish.

You cannot change your ethnic background.

Here's an experiment: look up photos of Yaphet Kotto, Alyson Hannigan, Adam Sandler, Natalie Portman, Lauren Bacall and Harrison Ford

Are Jews one ethnic group? Obviously not - all of them were born Jewish.

Being born Jewish refers to Jewish law – there are responsibilities and privileges in Judaism and laws were established to determine who is a Jew and who isn’t. That does NOT mean being Jewish is a race or ethnicity.

For example: one cannot partake of communion in a Catholic church unless you are Catholic and have recently gone to confession. A non-Jew cannot read from the Torah scrolls at synagogue.

could Boring get anymore wrong if he actually tried? Probably not.

and "T" right there with him. Jewishness was always through the mother, tribal lineage through the father. Do try and learn about Judaism before espousing RACIST ideology

"race" is a false construct invented in the 19th century as a justification for opressing others.

On the other hand, the notion that Judaism is just a religion was born in the 19th century as a misguided attempt to protect the Jews of Europe from the "scientific anti-semites" who believed that the Jews were an evil race.

In point of fact "the Jews" are a kinship group.

For well over a thousand years, the Jews (aka Hebrews / Israelites) were a full-fledged nation with a kingdom.

Then, for over a millenium and a half, they were a "landless nation" -- much like the gypsies, the kurds, to some degree, the native american nations.

If you examine what is called "the religion of Judaism" carefully -- this is in fact the social contract of the Jewish nation -- According to the Jewish belief -- it is a contract between God and the Jewish nation. Putting the religious beliefs aside - it is a set of laws which are expressly internal to a nation -- and it makes no sense at all if you divorce it from nationhood.

ie: you can't have a "Jewish religion" without a "Jewish nation" because the "Jewish religion" is the covenant that God made with "the Jewish nation" -- the vast majority of it only applies to "the Jewish nation"

By the way -- the reason Jews don't missionise is because the Jewish religion is seen as specificaly a national covenant with God -- ie: Jews believe that those who are not of the Jewish nation have no need to follow the Jewish religious laws in order to be counted by God as "righteous".

And -- a person can fully believe in the beliefs of the Jewish religion without being a Jew.

During the Roman empire and earlier, Greeks, Romans, Persians came to the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem to sacrifice -- and there were special areas set aside in the Jewish Temple for non-Jewish worshipers.

Today there are so-called "Congregations of Noahides" -- people who believe in Judaism, follow advice from rabbis, but chose not to "convert to Judaism".

In fact - what we now in English call "conversion", used to be referred to as adopting Jewish citizenship (this is how the Jewish-Roman historian Josephus discusses it)

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@Aravah - while you are conceptualy correct, your terminology is off.

Specificaly -- After Rome conquered Israel and took away independent political government, the status of the Jewish people became "Ethnos Iudeus".

Ethnos to the Romans meant a nation without a political state -- and they related with the Jews through a diplomatic representative called an "Ethnarch".

In modern anthropology, "ethnos" likewise means "nation" in the sense that does not require a state (like Jews, Kurds, Gypsies) and as a matter of fact -- a person can enter an ethnos through a "naturalization of citizenship" event (like Jewish conversion or Australian Aborigine tribal adoption).

To be overly technical, the Jews are considered a "Super Ethnos" which includes a number of Sub-Ethnothes (like the Litvish, Yeki, Juhuri, Galicianer, Farsi, Bavli... etc.)

I believe you have to define these terms.

Jewish - a person born of a Jewish parent(s). A biological descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That is why God is called the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Even God uses patrilineal decent there to show that the Jewish people are exactly that – “a people.”

Judaism - a religion of the Rabbis that most (but not all) Jewish people follow. And a number of Jewish people do not follow Judaism today. Also, if a Gentile decides to follow Judaism, that does not make them a Jew, but a convert to the rabbinical religion of Judaism.

Christian - a person (Jewish or Gentile) who follows "Christ". In Hebrew, we do not say "Christ" but the original hebrew was was "Messiah" or "Moshiach" which means "anointed One." One who was chosen by God for a very special task.

So a person can be Jewish or Gentile (but not both).

A person can be a follower of the Messiah (called Christ) and that does not stop him/her from being Jewish or Gentile.

I am Jewish by birth, but I came to believe years ago that Jesus (Yeshua in Hebrew) is indeed the Jewish Messiah.

Hope this helps!

Probably the only thing that Boing got right is that Jewishness is matrilinial. Judaism is a system of belief, not a "race" (however you define that term). There are Blue-eyed blond Jews, Black Jews, Hispanic Jews, and, for all I know, Oriental ones.

Look up the word jewish in the bible and tell me what you find nothing because jewish was made from the people who converted and the real jews came from the line of jacob and before him they were and still are hebrews but in order to be a jew you have to come from the line of jacob I'm not sure if its just the tribe of Judah or all the jews and dont believe that stuff about its passed down from the mother no the bible states that the seed of your father is what you are.

Nothing. There is in truth no genetically homogenous group that can be called 'Jews', if that should even be a measure. You can be born in the Jewish culture, though, and I guess that would mean you were born Jewish.

Jews originally started as blacks and interestingly if u know history you find that the white jews (europeans) converted to Judaism. There are now so many white Jews that people tend to forget that Black jews exist too. So technically the original jews were black not white. People convert to judaism too btw. To be born Jewish your mom has to be a Jew.

And btw, Jews don't techincally consider themselves caucaisan/white or black. They consider themselves a separate ethnicity.

<<If you are born Jewish, what does that mean?>>

It means on is "born Jewish". Simple enough.

<<I mean, what <snip> such a distinction.>>

Distinction between what?

<<Some people are <snip> born Black. etc.>>

'Jewish', in and of itself, isn't a skin color!

<<People aren';t born Catholic. or Methodist>>

That's because 'Catholic' and 'Methodist' aren't ethnicities.

'Jewish', in addition to being a religion, is also an ethnicity.

<<Why don't Jewish <snip> or do they?>>

Having an ethnicity, you mean. . . .? They do!

It means they are ethnically Jewish. There are atheist Jews too you know. It is an ethnoreligious group. Jews are Caucasian of Semitic origin but they accept converts too.