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    Posted: 31-Jan-2009 at 15:57
Wikipedia has it reasonably correct: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_the_word_Jew
 
While Jew meant an inhabitant of Judaea, since Judaea was named after Judah, I suppose it might be felt that Jew meant a descendant of Judah. But I don't think the population of Judaea was supposed to have descended from Judah - Judah was just given the terriotry to rule. Anyway the children of Judah would be a subset of the children of Israel, on ethnic (familial) lines, or possibly national (territorial) lines  NOT religious ones which is more the point.
 
It's commonplace in the Talmud that a child of Israel who does not follow the teachings of the prophets is still a child of Israel. Since a Jew is a child of Israel, then a Jew who does not observe (for instance a convert to Islam) must also still be a Jew.
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Originally posted by gcle2003


Only because you insist on treating 'Jew' as a religious designation, which it isn't. You can have Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs and Judaic Arabs. You can have Christian Jews, Muslim Jews and Judaic Jews. What you can't have are Judaic Christians or Judaic Muslims or Christian Muslims.


You' ll make me do what Chilbudios usually does.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Jew


Main Entry:
Jew Listen to the pronunciation of Jew
3: a person belonging to a continuation through descent or conversion of the ancient Jewish people
4: one whose religion is Judaism


The first 2 definitions are omited because i think they are irrelevant in this comment of mine. The second will be used later.

The third is partially true, yet it is not enough by itself to make someone a Jew. For example, just because a descendant of mine was a Jew, this does not make me automatically a Jew. I need to be a member of the Judaic religion as well. To put it bluntly, i do not know any Jews who haven't made circumcision.


Also, about structures:

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/chrstuni/relations-jews-docs/rc_pc_chrstuni_doc_19750110_setting-commission_en.html



RELATIONS WITH THE JEWS

 

The religious relations of the Catholic Church with world Judaism through the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity have been marked by a series of notable events since the last Plenaria.

These events are set out below in chronological order.






Originally posted by gcle2003



It has been misused that way, yes. In antiquity it simply meant an inhabitant of Judaea (not even of Israel). Taking it as a religious designation is as ignorant as assuming 'Arab' is a religious designation because most Arabs are Muslims.




from Merriam-Webster

2: a member of a nation existing in Palestine from the sixth century b.c. to the first century a.d.


The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans was the turning point for the Jewish population. They emigrated to the rest of the known world.  Thus,  the term Judaeus or Ιουδαίος practically lost it's terrestrial meaning. Concerning your comparison with Arabs, i believe it is wrong , because the term Arab describes a Semitic people, that is a people speaking a Semitic language. Jews never spoke one language. Some of their languages were not even Semitic. Ladino are a Romance language and Yiddish a Germanic one, to name the most prominent. Only in the last century ,with the creation of the State of Israel and it's need for nationalization (modern) Hebrew became the prominent  language among Jews.




Plus, the fact that i can be officially considered a Jew after conversion to Judaism, automatically gives the term religious reference.



Edited by Spartakus - 31-Jan-2009 at 16:56
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Originally posted by Spartakus


Originally posted by gcle2003


Only because you insist on treating 'Jew' as a religious designation, which it isn't. You can have Christian Arabs, Muslim Arabs and Judaic Arabs. You can have Christian Jews, Muslim Jews and Judaic Jews. What you can't have are Judaic Christians or Judaic Muslims or Christian Muslims.


You' ll make me do what Chilbudios usually does.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Jew


Main Entry:
Jew Listen to the pronunciation of Jew
3: a person belonging to a continuation through descent or conversion of the ancient Jewish people
4: one whose religion is Judaism


The first 2 definitions are omited because i think they are irrelevant in this comment of mine. The second will be used later.

The third is partially true, yet it is not enough by itself to make someone a Jew. For example, just because a descendant of mine was a Jew, this does not make me automatically a Jew. I need to be a member of the Judaic religion as well. To put it bluntly, i do not know any Jews who haven't made circumcision.
Then you don't have an exhaustive knowledge of Jews - let alone I no many circumcised non-Jews.
 
a) I was challenging your statement that in antiquity 'Jew' was a religious desigintion. It simpla wasn't. The word was originally a Jewish forename; it was transferred to the region ruled by a person of that name; and then it was used for an inhabitant of that territory. There were children of Israel who lived outside Judah (notably those in Israel) who were not know as Jews.
 
b) the dictionary correctly gives ways that the term is used in modern English, but they are alternatives. Jew is sometimes used as a religious designation (as it is indeed by you - I could hardly deny you use it that way) and sometimes as an ethnic/racial one. It is important to distinguish between the two and recognise that a Jew does not necessarily believe in Judaism and someone who does observe Judaist precepts is not necessarily ethnically Jewish. Otherwise, as is happening here, blame (or for that matter praise) for the one is attributed to the other.
 
We desperately need two words because, as the dictionary says, there are two distinctly different meanings. Which is why I use 'Judaist' to mean a follower of Judaism, and 'Jew' to mean a 'child of Israel'. f you want to use 'Jew' to mean a follower of Judaism, then don't call the Israeli leaders of the last 60 years 'Jews': use whatever term you want to coin for 'child of Israel'. 'Israelite' might do it, but is easily confused with 'Israeli'.
 
I should put faith in a document that refers to 'the Catholic Church' when it means the 'Roman Catholic Church'?
 
I also don't see the point of the quotation. I don't deny some people think all Jews are Judaists, I just deny that they are, and to be frank I'm sure the Vatican knows that, e.g. Israel - later Eugenio - Zolli, onetime Chief Rabbi of Rome, became a Catholic. That didn't mean he stopped being a Jew.
 
I might as well quote the Nuremberg Laws to you. They didn't use 'Jew' as a religious designation: at least they were honest about it.




RELATIONS WITH THE JEWS

 

The religious relations of the Catholic Church with world Judaism through the Secretariat for Promoting Christian Unity have been marked by a series of notable events since the last Plenaria.

These events are set out below in chronological order.






Originally posted by gcle2003



It has been misused that way, yes. In antiquity it simply meant an inhabitant of Judaea (not even of Israel). Taking it as a religious designation is as ignorant as assuming 'Arab' is a religious designation because most Arabs are Muslims.


from Merriam-Webster

2: a member of a nation existing in Palestine from the sixth century b.c. to the first century a.d.
That is a modern dictionary giving modern usage. It's not how the term was used in antiquity. (Unless you take 'a nation existing in Palestine' to mean the inhabitants of Judaea, which would be OK.)
 
In contrast the etymological dictionary at http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=jew&searchmode=none gives for Jew:
c.1175 (in plural, giwis), from Anglo-Fr. iuw, from O.Fr. giu, from L. Judaeum (nom. Judaeus), from Gk. Ioudaios, from Aramaic jehudhai (Heb. y'hudi "Jew," from Y'hudah "Judah," lit. "celebrated," name of Jacob's fourth son and of the tribe descended from him. Replaced O.E. Iudeas "the Jews." Originally, "Hebrew of the kingdom of Judah." Jews' harp "simple mouth harp" is from 1584, earlier Jews' trump (1545); the connection with Jewishness is obscure. Jew-baiting first recorded 1853, in ref. to Ger. Judenhetze. In uneducated times, inexplicable ancient artifacts were credited to Jews, based on the biblical chronology of history: e.g. Jews' money (1577) "Roman coins found in England." In Greece, after Christianity had erased the memory of classical glory, ruins of pagan temples were called "Jews' castles."
The destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans was the turning point for the Jewish population. They emigrated to the rest of the known world.  Thus,  the term Judaeus or Ιουδαίος practically lost it's terrestrial meaning.
After some while yes. In Classical and Imperial Latin it still meant an inhabitant of Judah, or someone who came from there. It didn't mean someone who followed their religion. For instance there is no doubt that Josephus was seen as Jewish though the Majority of the Jews saw him as a betrayer.  Jesus for instance was seen as a Galileean, and Paul and Peter and the rest were still considered Jews even after they became Christians.
 
In fact at the time of Nero's persecution Christian Jews were still called Jews, though I grant that by that time most of them didn't come from Judaea. It still was a racial/national designation.
Concerning your comparison with Arabs, i believe it is wrong , because the term Arab describes a Semitic people, that is a people speaking a Semitic language. Jews never spoke one language. Some of their languages were not even Semitic. Ladino are a Romance language and Yiddish a Germanic one, to name the most prominent. Only in the last century ,with the creation of the State of Israel and it's need for nationalization (modern) Hebrew became the prominent  language among Jews.
Language has nothing to do with it. Hebrew wasn't even the language of the Jewish people in classical times. The Septuagint was compiled to help non-Hebrew speaking Judaists. That's simply the result of the diaspora. There hasn't been  such an Arab diaspora, since the Arabs were so long on the winning side - with the result that loads of people apart from the Arabs speak Arabic, just as loads of people other than the English speak English. As I understand it, most Romany don't speak Romany either, for much the same reason.

Plus, the fact that i can be officially considered a Jew after conversion to Judaism, automatically gives the term religious reference.
Of course it currently has a religious reference. Why do you think I'm complaining? It irritates me just as much when Jews use the term as if it was a religious designation - mostly it's only fuindamentalists that do - the majority of Jews don't.
 
The point is not to suggest that a Jew is a Judaist just because he is a Jew. That's actually as daft as assuming I'm a member of the Church of England because I'm English, and it's flatly untrue.  Again most Israelis are not observant, and most do not believe in the God of the Torah.
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Originally posted by gcle2003


Then you don't have an exhaustive knowledge of Jews - let alone I no many circumcised non-Jews.
 


Of course circumcision is also practiced  by Muslims. That's not my point. Every male child belonging to a Jewish family , has  to be circumcised, if the family wants it to become a Jew. And  "Circumcision in Judaism is a sign of the covenant between God and Israel", because "God said to Abraham, 'Such shall be the covenant between Me and you and your offspring to follow which you shall keep: every male among you shall be circumcised. you shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin, and that shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and you' (Genesis 17:10-11)".

http://judaism.about.com/od/bris/a/bris.htm

Originally posted by gcle2003


a) I was challenging your statement that in antiquity 'Jew' was a religious desigintion. It simpla wasn't. The word was originally a Jewish forename; it was transferred to the region ruled by a person of that name; and then it was used for an inhabitant of that territory. There were children of Israel who lived outside Judah (notably those in Israel) who were not know as Jews.



After some while yes. In Classical and Imperial Latin it still meant an inhabitant of Judah, or someone who came from there. It didn't mean someone who followed their religion. For instance there is no doubt that Josephus was seen as Jewish though the Majority of the Jews saw him as a betrayer.  Jesus for instance was seen as a Galileean, and Paul and Peter and the rest were still considered Jews even after they became Christians.
 
In fact at the time of Nero's persecution Christian Jews were still called Jews, though I grant that by that time most of them didn't come from Judaea. It still was a racial/national designation.


I admit i am not that familiar with  references of the term Jew in Latin texts, so i will not continue about the specific period until i read relevant texts.

 
Originally posted by gcle2003


b) the dictionary correctly gives ways that the term is used in modern English, but they are alternatives. Jew is sometimes used as a religious designation (as it is indeed by you - I could hardly deny you use it that way) and sometimes as an ethnic/racial one. It is important to distinguish between the two and recognise that a Jew does not necessarily believe in Judaism and someone who does observe Judaist precepts is not necessarily ethnically Jewish. Otherwise, as is happening here, blame (or for that matter praise) for the one is attributed to the other.


If you look at wikipedia, you will see that it describes Jews as an ethnoreligious group, that is a group of people "whose members are also unified by a common religious background.Ethnoreligious communities define their ethnic identity neither exclusively by ancestral heritage nor simply by religious affiliation, but often through a combination of both".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious

Thus, the religious reference is an integral part of Jewish identity.
 
Originally posted by gcle2003


We desperately need two words because, as the dictionary says, there are two distinctly different meanings.


They are not different, they overlap one another.

 
Originally posted by gcle2003


I also don't see the point of the quotation. I don't deny some people think all Jews are Judaists, I just deny that they are, and to be frank I'm sure the Vatican knows that, e.g. Israel - later Eugenio - Zolli, onetime Chief Rabbi of Rome, became a Catholic. That didn't mean he stopped being a Jew.
 


The point is that a structure ( the Catholic Church) recognizes the term with it's religious reference.






Originally posted by gcle2003

Language has nothing to do with it. Hebrew wasn't even the language of the Jewish people in classical times. The Septuagint was compiled to help non-Hebrew speaking Judaists. That's simply the result of the diaspora. There hasn't been  such an Arab diaspora, since the Arabs were so long on the winning side - with the result that loads of people apart from the Arabs speak Arabic, just as loads of people other than the English speak English. As I understand it, most Romany don't speak Romany either, for much the same reason.


It has everything to do with it. You compared a group of people with linguistic reference ( Semitic Arabs) with a group of people with ethnoreligious reference (Jews).

Originally posted by gcle2003

Of course it currently has a religious reference


 As you know the Ottoman Empire categorized it's populations with religious criteria. There were the Orthodox Millet ( Rum Milleti) , the Muslim Millet, the Armenian Millet and the Jewish Millet (Yahudi Milleti). You see that the term Jew is equal to the (Christian) Orthodox , Muslim and  (Christian) Armenian ones.
 
Originally posted by gcle2003


The point is not to suggest that a Jew is a Judaist just because he is a Jew. That's actually as daft as assuming I'm a member of the Church of England because I'm English, and it's flatly untrue.  Again most Israelis are not observant, and most do not believe in the God of the Torah.


He/she is not necerally an observant, but he/she is related to Judaism, whether he/she likes it or not, because , as i mentioned above, it is an integral part of his/her identity.

Jew # English
Israeli=English
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Originally posted by gcle2003


So? What makes you think most Jews pay any attention to that? Most Jews don't even believe there was a covenant between God and their people. Lots of Jews don't even believe in God (and most of the Zionist pioneers were among them).


It does not really matter whether  they pay attention to it, because it happens in a religious context. Unless there is a way to be circumcised in a secular way, which i am not aware of.

Originally posted by gcle2003



To use that to claim that you have to be a Judaist to be a Jew is just plain silly. The quote is a tangled and obscure mess which has obviously been cobbled together to try and meet everyone's requirements. At least the dictionary you quoted got it right (as a matter of current usage).
Being a Jew is SOMETIMES used as an ethnic designation and SOMETIMES as a religious one.


Do not cap me.
 
Originally posted by gcle2003


Saying only Judaists are Jews would mean the majority of Israelis are not Jews. So what's all the fuss about?


Quite wrong, the majority of Israelis declare themselves Jews.According to the Statistical Abstract of Israel, in the
2.4
 Sources of Population Growth, by District, Population Group and Religion

section,  there were (at the end of the year 2008 and in millions) 5,478.2 Jews (this is not my term, it's in the abstract btw), 1,206.1 Moslems, 151.6 Christians, 121.7 Arab-Christians, 119.7 Druze, and 285.5 non classified.

Originally posted by gcle2003


Ask some atheist, Christian, Muslim or agnostic Jews, or even New Age Jews and Scientology Jews how hey feel about their necessarily being Judaist.


Their opinions are respectable, but they are products of the industrial age. Self-determination is also a product of the industrial age. This does not mean i am against it, but i just state it.
 


Originally posted by gcle2003



Of course they overlap. You can have ethnic Jews whoe believe in Judaism. There are quite a few around in fact.


They are not few.
 


Originally posted by gcle2003



 
Well so do you. I don't find wither terribly convincing authorities.


It is not supposed to be convincing, i just presented what i meant by structures.

Originally posted by gcle2003



Doesn't matter if I compared them to a group with green eyes and red noses. The point is that any group that goes through a diaspora living in many different coûntries is going to end up speaking the local languages - unless they conquer the other countries like the Arabs did.


Thus what remains as the unifying factor? What do Yemenite Jews had in common with Jews Russia, other than religion ?

Originally posted by gcle2003



Only because you put '(Christian)' in brackets before Armenian. And you left out the Greek Millet or, rather, called it the Orthodox Millet: 'Rum' I believe does not mean 'Orthodox'.
 
Are you suggesting agnostic Armenians weren't classified as Armenian?
 
Armenian, Greek, Jewish and Muslim doesn't suggest a purely religious distinction. Though I would agree that the distinction between ethnic and religious wasn't so important until somewhere between the 16th and the 18th cnêntury, when the Reformation and the Enlightenment weakened the correlation between ethnicism and religious alignment.


Chilbudios answered pretty well.




 
Originally posted by gcle2003

You're saying that a Jew cannot give up Judaism, and discard it? What is he? Branded for eternity?

He can,in a personal level, but societies do not give up that easily, what they recognize as identities.

Originally posted by gcle2003


The English are a much more mongrel group than the Jews. I'd agree that legally Israeli is a nationalist just as English is. Jew however is more like Anglo-Saxon than it is like English.


Ethiopian Jews
 

Yemenite Jews


Russian Jews



Edited by Spartakus - 04-Feb-2009 at 19:15
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Originally posted by gcle2003

Only because you put '(Christian)' in brackets before Armenian. And you left out the Greek Millet or, rather, called it the Orthodox Millet: 'Rum' I believe does not mean 'Orthodox'.
 
Are you suggesting agnostic Armenians weren't classified as Armenian?
 
Armenian, Greek, Jewish and Muslim doesn't suggest a purely religious distinction. Though I would agree that the distinction between ethnic and religious wasn't so important until somewhere between the 16th and the 18th cnêntury, when the Reformation and the Enlightenment weakened the correlation between ethnicism and religious alignment.
Ottoman millets were religious communities. Instead of arguing from ignorance, better open a history book. If that is a tedious task, even the shallow, but universal Wiki can serve for a guide: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millet_(Ottoman_Empire)  There are other similar "quick references", at only one google search distance: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/382871/millet/ 
 
Millet-i Rum was the Orthodox millet which included not only Greeks, but also Bulgarians, Serbs, Vlachs, Albanians but also Orthodox Christians from Asia like Syrians, etc. (sometimes it is translated by "Greek millet" in a similar way like "Orthodox Christianity" or "Church" is sometimes referred as "Greek Christianity" or "Church"). And Armenian Christianity is different from the Orthodox one, like Coptic, Catholic or any other branch. The split between the Armenian Church and the other churches is quite early, during the period of Ecumenical Councils. One can argue that these millets were not very homogenous, especially the Armenian one which for a long time was used as a cover for many other religious denominations (even Catholics, a Catholic millet was established only in the 19th century!) which did not fit in other millets, however in the end they were communities defined by their religion, nothing else.
 
It is true however, that under a millet the communities could have been further divided, even by some criteria which we would call today as ethnic (and these divisions formed the basis of the several nation states emerging from the Ottoman empire).
 
The Jews under the Ottoman Empire were recognized after the religion they practiced not after who their parents were, nor the language they spoke (the Jews from the ex-Byzantine territories were mainly speakers of Greek, the Jews from Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc. were mainly speakers of Arabic, etc.). The hakham bashi was, of course, a rabbi.
 
 


Edited by Chilbudios - 01-Feb-2009 at 23:51
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The Jews under the Ottoman Empire were recognized after the religion they practiced not after who their parents were, nor the language they spoke (the Jews from the ex-Byzantine territories were mainly speakers of Greek, the Jews from Egypt, Palestine, Syria, etc. were mainly speakers of Arabic, etc.).
Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire had the right to apply to the Muslim courts instead of their own. If this happened the Islamic court took precedence. Especially many Jewish and Christian women applied to the Muslim courts instead of their own, because Islamic civil law gave more rights (divorce) to women.

As to what a Jew is, in Turkish you can call someone a 'Musevi' which means 'follower of Moses' (which can be used to refer to the religion only) or a 'Yahudi' which means a Jew. A Jew is more than just someone who adheres to the religion, it is also an ethnicity. But many consider the ethnicity and the religion to be the same. Which does not really matter because either way Israel is an apartheid state.  


Edited by Beylerbeyi - 02-Feb-2009 at 11:20
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It may not matter to the question of whether Israel is an apartheid state, that's true.

However as a good Marxist I would have thought that you'd be the first to agree with me that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not religious but a matter of controlling capital.
 
Religion is just being used as, if not the opium, the methamphetamine of the masses by unscrupulous leaders (on both sides) to beef up fervour.
 
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However as a good Marxist I would have thought that you'd be the first to agree with me that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not religious but a matter of controlling capital.
 
Religion is just being used as, if not the opium, the methamphetamine of the masses by unscrupulous leaders (on both sides) to beef up fervour.
'Methamphetamine of the masses' ha ha. Sure, 'good Marxist' or not, I agree with you. The conflict itself is not religious. 
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Originally posted by gcle2003


So? What makes you think most Jews pay any attention to that? Most Jews don't even believe there was a covenant between God and their people. Lots of Jews don't even believe in God (and most of the Zionist pioneers were among them).


It does not really matter whether  they pay attention to it, because it happens in a religious context. Unless there is a way to be circumcised in a secular way, which i am not aware of.

Originally posted by gcle2003



To use that to claim that you have to be a Judaist to be a Jew is just plain silly. The quote is a tangled and obscure mess which has obviously been cobbled together to try and meet everyone's requirements. At least the dictionary you quoted got it right (as a matter of current usage).
Being a Jew is SOMETIMES used as an ethnic designation and SOMETIMES as a religious one.


Do not cap me!Tongue
 
Originally posted by gcle2003


Saying only Judaists are Jews would mean the majority of Israelis are not Jews. So what's all the fuss about?


Quite wrong, the majority of Israelis declare themselves Jews.According to the Statistical Abstract of Israel, in the
2.4
 Sources of Population Growth, by District, Population Group and Religion

section,  there were (at the end of the year 2008 and in millions) 5,478.2 Jews (this is not my term, it's in the abstract btw), 1,206.1 Moslems, 151.6 Christians, 121.7 Arab-Christians, 119.7 Druze, and 285.5 non classified.

Originally posted by gcle2003


Ask some atheist, Christian, Muslim or agnostic Jews, or even New Age Jews and Scientology Jews how hey feel about their necessarily being Judaist.


Their opinions are respectable, but they are products of the industrial age. Self-determination is also a product of the industrial age. This does not mean i am against it, but i just state it.
 


Originally posted by gcle2003



Of course they overlap. You can have ethnic Jews whoe believe in Judaism. There are quite a few around in fact.


They are not few.
 


Originally posted by gcle2003



 
Well so do you. I don't find wither terribly convincing authorities.


It is not supposed to be convincing, i just presented what i meant by structures.

Originally posted by gcle2003



Doesn't matter if I compared them to a group with green eyes and red noses. The point is that any group that goes through a diaspora living in many different coûntries is going to end up speaking the local languages - unless they conquer the other countries like the Arabs did.


Thus what remains as the unifying factor? What do Yemenite Jews had in common with Jews Russia, other than religion ?

Originally posted by gcle2003



Only because you put '(Christian)' in brackets before Armenian. And you left out the Greek Millet or, rather, called it the Orthodox Millet: 'Rum' I believe does not mean 'Orthodox'.
 
Are you suggesting agnostic Armenians weren't classified as Armenian?
 
Armenian, Greek, Jewish and Muslim doesn't suggest a purely religious distinction. Though I would agree that the distinction between ethnic and religious wasn't so important until somewhere between the 16th and the 18th cnêntury, when the Reformation and the Enlightenment weakened the correlation between ethnicism and religious alignment.


Chilbudios answered pretty well.




 
Originally posted by gcle2003

You're saying that a Jew cannot give up Judaism, and discard it? What is he? Branded for eternity?

He can,in a personal level, but societies do not give up that easily, what they recognize as identities.

Originally posted by gcle2003


The English are a much more mongrel group than the Jews. I'd agree that legally Israeli is a nationalist just as English is. Jew however is more like Anglo-Saxon than it is like English.


Ethiopian Jews
 

Yemenite Jews


Russian Jews


Sorry, i edited your post earlier!!!!!! I am so sry!!!!
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Originally posted by Spartakus


Originally posted by gcle2003


So? What makes you think most Jews pay any attention to that? Most Jews don't even believe there was a covenant between God and their people. Lots of Jews don't even believe in God (and most of the Zionist pioneers were among them).


It does not really matter whether  they pay attention to it, because it happens in a religious context. Unless there is a way to be circumcised in a secular way, which i am not aware of.
Of course there is. Pretty well the whole British army in the middle east was circumcised and they weren't Jewish or Muslim. It had nothing to do with religion at all. Most British boys in my generaltion, including me, were circumcised for what, rightly or wrongly were considered health reasons.
 
As far as I'm aware the health reasons for circumcision in the middle eastern environment are valid ones.

Originally posted by gcle2003



To use that to claim that you have to be a Judaist to be a Jew is just plain silly. The quote is a tangled and obscure mess which has obviously been cobbled together to try and meet everyone's requirements. At least the dictionary you quoted got it right (as a matter of current usage).
Being a Jew is SOMETIMES used as an ethnic designation and SOMETIMES as a religious one.


Do not cap me!Tongue
 
Originally posted by gcle2003


Saying only Judaists are Jews would mean the majority of Israelis are not Jews. So what's all the fuss about?


Quite wrong, the majority of Israelis declare themselves Jews.
I never said they didn't. I said they weren't Judaists. Of course they are mostly Jews. Just not Judaists.
 
You can't just take the fact that someone or some authority says someone is a Jew to indicate they are religious Jews. You're all the time producving circular arguments, basically:
a) Jewish is a religious designation
b) this person is a Jew
c) therefore Jewish is a religious designation.
 
According to the Statistical Abstract of Israel, in the

section,  there were (at the end of the year 2008 and in millions) 5,478.2 Jews (this is not my term, it's in the abstract btw), 1,206.1 Moslems, 151.6 Christians, 121.7 Arab-Christians, 119.7 Druze, and 285.5 non classified.

Originally posted by gcle2003


Ask some atheist, Christian, Muslim or agnostic Jews, or even New Age Jews and Scientology Jews how hey feel about their necessarily being Judaist.


Their opinions are respectable, but they are products of the industrial age. Self-determination is also a product of the industrial age. This does not mean i am against it, but i just state it.
'The industrial age'  has nothing to do with it. It has more to do with the Englightenment than anything else. However, it still means that 'Jewish' is not a religious designation. You can't say that 'Jewish' is a religious designation but some Jews are not Jewish, industrial age, enlightenment or whatever.
 


Originally posted by gcle2003



Of course they overlap. You can have ethnic Jews whoe believe in Judaism. There are quite a few around in fact.


They are not few.
'Quite a few' in English English means 'lots'.
 
Originally posted by gcle2003



 
Well so do you. I don't find wither terribly convincing authorities.


It is not supposed to be convincing, i just presented what i meant by structures.

Originally posted by gcle2003



Doesn't matter if I compared them to a group with green eyes and red noses. The point is that any group that goes through a diaspora living in many different coûntries is going to end up speaking the local languages - unless they conquer the other countries like the Arabs did.


Thus what remains as the unifying factor? What do Yemenite Jews had in common with Jews Russia, other than religion ?
The claim is racial descent. I don't know if the claim is valid or not, but that makes no difference. It's still a racial claim, whereas Yemeni and Russian are nationalities.
 
It's quite possible that some people who claim to be Jews are not, in fact, Jews.

Originally posted by gcle2003

 
Only because you put '(Christian)' in brackets before Armenian. And you left out the Greek Millet or, rather, called it the Orthodox Millet: 'Rum' I believe does not mean 'Orthodox'.
 
Are you suggesting agnostic Armenians weren't classified as Armenian?
 
Armenian, Greek, Jewish and Muslim doesn't suggest a purely religious distinction. Though I would agree that the distinction between ethnic and religious wasn't so important until somewhere between the 16th and the 18th cnêntury, when the Reformation and the Enlightenment weakened the correlation between ethnicism and religious alignment.


Chilbudios answered pretty well.




 
Originally posted by gcle2003

You're saying that a Jew cannot give up Judaism, and discard it? What is he? Branded for eternity?

He can,in a personal level, but societies do not give up that easily, what they recognize as identities.
So you admit that someone who does not follow the Jewish religion (Judaism, for ease of understanding) does not therefore stop being Jewish?

Originally posted by gcle2003


The English are a much more mongrel group than the Jews. I'd agree that legally Israeli is a nationalist just as English is. Jew however is more like Anglo-Saxon than it is like English.


Sorry, i edited your post earlier!!!!!! I am so sry!!!!
I have no idea what those pictures have to do with anything whatsoever. It is totally immaterial what anyone looks like. 
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Jews are qualified and accepted as members of the Jewish community according to religious mandates, which include, but are hardly restricted to or bound by, ancestry. The son of a Jewish father is not a Jew and is not generally accepted by Jewish culture as being one. Israeli law regarding who can claim Jewish status for immigration purposes affirms this.

Clearly, ancestry plays a role, but not in any sort of usual sense. 

Judaism is - and always has been - an identity or culture more than anything else. Ancestry is a qualifying factor, but a special - religiously defined - notion of ancestry, that's part of the culture even beyond the group that actually practices the religion. In other cultures it works nothing like this. If your mother OR father is Scottish, you're Scottish (at least partially). If your father is a Jew, but your mother is not, then you are not a Jew and unless you convert, will not be considered a Jew by the Jewish community.

"Ethnoreligious" is a very apt description.

Originally posted by gcle2003

In Classical and Imperial Latin it still meant an inhabitant of Judah, or someone who came from there. It didn't mean someone who followed their religion. For instance there is no doubt that Josephus was seen as Jewish though the Majority of the Jews saw him as a betrayer.

This is terribly incorrect. Josephus was considered a Jew because he was a (devout!) follower of the religion, because he was circumcised, because his mother was a Jew, and so on. 

The Greeks had been using the term "Ioudaios" long before the diaspora to describe Alexandrian Jews and so on. Not to mention that the first Gentile Christians, in Roman times, were called iudaisantes or "Judaizers" because of the proselytic habits. Obviously this didn't mean that they were carting people off to Judah! They were converting them to some form or variant of Judaism.

The Septuagint was compiled to help non-Hebrew speaking Judaists. That's simply the result of the diaspora.

Only in a world where linear time doesn't apply. Work on the Septuagint began in the 3rd century BC, and was finished during the 1st century BC ... but the diaspora wasn't underway until 135 AD.



Edited by edgewaters - 05-Feb-2009 at 15:03
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Originally posted by gcle2003



As far as I'm aware the health reasons for circumcision in the middle eastern environment are valid ones.


Of course it is for health reasons, the same for not eating pork. But the manner of conducting it, inside the Jewish community and not in the British army, is that of a ritual.


Originally posted by gcle2003


I never said they didn't. I said they weren't Judaists. Of course they are mostly Jews. Just not Judaists.



What you say a Judaist, is what i say a Jew.
 
Originally posted by gcle2003


You can't just take the fact that someone or some authority says someone is a Jew to indicate they are religious Jews. You're all the time producving circular arguments, basically:
a) Jewish is a religious designation
b) this person is a Jew
c) therefore Jewish is a religious designation.
 


But i cannot just take someone's opinion and ignore that of a 100, in which 100 there are many others of his/her kind. It's like i say, oh yeah i am a Christian and a Communist, which is absurd, because Communists are atheists. I can say that Communism is this and that, and ignore Marx in my own fantasy world, yet if you take me for granted ignoring everybody else ( the Communist Parties worldwide, those belonging to the parties worldwide, Marxists-Leninists, Maoists etc) then we end up with a chaotic world, where only individual opinions matter and that of the structures (which is nothing more than an organized total of individuals) ignored. We need common ground with acceptable definitions and Judaist is not one of them.



Originally posted by gcle2003


'The industrial age'  has nothing to do with it. It has more to do with the Englightenment than anything else. However, it still means that 'Jewish' is not a religious designation. You can't say that 'Jewish' is a religious designation but some Jews are not Jewish, industrial age, enlightenment or whatever.


I believe Enlightenment set the bases, but it was industrial age that spread systematically to the entire population ideas about ethnicity, nation, secularism etc. To put it briefly, the Ottoman Empire did not collapse in the Enlightenment age, but in the industrial age.

What I can say is that Jewish is a religious designation but some Jews believe themselves otherwise.
 


Originally posted by gcle2003



'Quite a few' in English English means 'lots'.


Sorry, i was quite hasty when i was writing the reply. I even edited your previous topic without realizing it in the process.


Originally posted by gcle2003



The claim is racial descent. I don't know if the claim is valid or not, but that makes no difference. It's still a racial claim, whereas Yemeni and Russian are nationalities.


Of course makes a difference whether it is valid or not,, because, without the religious designation and with a claim to a racial descent invalid, then there is no Jewish ethnos.
 


Originally posted by gcle2003

So you admit that someone who does not follow the Jewish religion (Judaism, for ease of understanding) does not therefore stop being Jewish?


I replied earlier to that with my example of Christian-Communist.

Originally posted by gcle2003



I have no idea what those pictures have to do with anything whatsoever. It is totally immaterial what anyone looks like. 


You talked about mongrel people, and i wanted to present with these photos that modern Jews are as equally, if not more, a mongrel people as English.


Edited by Spartakus - 05-Feb-2009 at 17:58
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Originally posted by Spartakus


Originally posted by gcle2003


Of course they overlap. You can have ethnic Jews whoe believe in Judaism. There are quite a few around in fact.


They are not few.
 
So then you admit that there are ethnic Jews.  The simple fact of the matter is that Gcle is right about how the Jewish community sees their identity; that is that they (the Jewish community) don't see the meaning of Jew as strictly a religious one.  One can be a Jew and have nothing to do with the religion.  A prime example of this would be myself.  I am a Jew and and don't practice the religion nor do I follow the tenets of the religion but ethnically I am still a Jew.  If the identity "Jew" is a religious one how can I be classified as a Jew?  
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Originally posted by edgewaters

Jews are qualified and accepted as members of the Jewish community according to religious mandates, which include, but are hardly restricted to or bound by, ancestry. The son of a Jewish father is not a Jew and is not generally accepted by Jewish culture as being one.

Currently true. However it was not always so. Check the begats in the Old Testament. All male lineages. Restriction to the female line was established later during the diaspora, because of the uncertainty regarding the father, particularly in a persecuted minority.
 
In other words it was ensure the RACIAL descent. And it proves definitively that practising Judaism is not relevant to the question of being Jewish.
Israeli law regarding who can claim Jewish status for immigration purposes affirms this.
Yes but the Israel-born sons of Jewish fathers are Jews. And merels practising Judaism won't get you in (at least not under this rule). The rule is racist: that descent is seen through the female doesn't change that.
Clearly, ancestry plays a role, but not in any sort of usual sense. 
Because usually racial descent is reckoned through the father (cf my exchange about this in the context of the British monarchy.)
Through the mother is still racial.
 
(What's really unusual is reckoning descent through the female line in an otherwise patriarchal society. But it's still racial.)

Judaism is - and always has been - an identity or culture more than anything else.

'Judaism' refers to the religion. If you want to bring in another concept than reace or religion you need a new word - or possibly just refer to 'Jewish culture'. 'Identity begs the question, which is how the identity is established - racially, religiously, or, possibly, cultuirally.)
 
Ancestry is a qualifying factor, but a special - religiously defined - notion of ancestry,
It's not religiously defined. I'll give you culturally defined, but the purpose is to ensure racial purity. Other cultures did this by keeping womenfolk in harems or otherwise secluded, but the Jews in Europe and America particularly were in no position to do this.
 
Though they probably did when all those begats were going on, or they wouldn't have known who begat whom. Incidentally quite a lot of the Jewish characters in the Bible didn't practice Judaism, which is why God kept getting angry with them. But He still considered them Jews, so He was using a racial criterion. Smile
 
OK if you don't take God as the authority, then at least the compilers of the Tanakh thought they were still Jews.
 
that's part of the culture even beyond the group that actually practices the religion. In other cultures it works nothing like this. If your mother OR father is Scottish, you're Scottish (at least partially). If your father is a Jew, but your mother is not, then you are not a Jew and unless you convert, will not be considered a Jew by the Jewish community.
Converting to Judaism won't make you a Jew. It will make you subject to the Jewish courts for personal status matters, but that's not the same thing at all.
The Scots will consider such a person Scottish. They will also consider the part-Jew partially Jewish. The analogy is not strict.

"Ethnoreligious" is a very apt description.

It doesn't add much. It still remains true that if you are racially (in Jewish eyes) Jewish, then you are a Jew, whereas if you practise Judaism, you aren't necessarily.
 
"Ethnic" trumps "religious". In fact that's obvious from the Bible itself and the fact of the covenant with the Jewish people. God made the covenant with the people. The people inherited the covenant. They didn't necessarily follow it, but their responsibility to follow it remained (and still does in Jewish eyes, because in their veiw the covenant is still in force).
 
A convert to Judaism who is not a Jew may be as observant as all getout but he is NOT bound by the covenant, not being a 'child of Israel' though he may be a 'citizen of Israel'.
Originally posted by gcle2003

In Classical and Imperial Latin it still meant an inhabitant of Judah, or someone who came from there. It didn't mean someone who followed their religion. For instance there is no doubt that Josephus was seen as Jewish though the Majority of the Jews saw him as a betrayer.

This is terribly incorrect. Josephus was considered a Jew because he was a (devout!) follower of the religion, because he was circumcised, because his mother was a Jew, and so on. 

The Jewish community didn't consider him devout. And you can't be a Jew because you're circumcised (or many million men are due for a shock). There are uncircumcised (male) Jews. Shoouldn't be maybe, but there are. And they're still Jews.
 
I also don't think the 'mother' rule applied in Josephus' time either, though it would be the clincher now.
The Greeks had been using the term "Ioudaios" long before the diaspora to describe Alexandrian Jews and so on. Not to mention that the first Gentile Christians, in Roman times, were called iudaisantes or "Judaizers" because of the proselytic habits. Obviously this didn't mean that they were carting people off to Judah! They were converting them to some form or variant of Judaism.
Lewis and Short has iudaizo and presumably its relatives as vulgar Gallic.
 
I don't deny that a word that originally meant 'from Judaea' came to mean 'Jewish' in general. The question is only when. 'Ioudaios' being applied to Alexandrian Jews could of course be under the misapprehension they came from Judaea. I don't think the Greeks would have been particularly worried whether they were from Judaea or Samaria or Galillee.

The Septuagint was compiled to help non-Hebrew speaking Judaists. That's simply the result of the diaspora.

Only in a world where linear time doesn't apply. Work on the Septuagint began in the 3rd century BC, and was finished during the 1st century BC ... but the diaspora wasn't underway until 135 AD.

You're presumably assuming diaspora only applies after the Roman suppression. It began when the Jews started spreading around the Mediterranean and middle East before the time of the Septuagint. Arguably in fact it started with the Exile. Lots of Jews preferred to stay there rather than go home.
 
If there was no diaspora then, then how come there were Jews in Alexandria at all?
  • the body of Jews (or Jewish communities) outside Palestine or modern Israel
  • the dispersion of the Jews outside Israel; from the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 587-86 BC when they were exiled to Babylonia up to the present time
  • the dispersion or spreading of something that was originally localized (as a people or language or culture)
    wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn



    • Edited by gcle2003 - 05-Feb-2009 at 22:30
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    Originally posted by Spartakus

    What you say a Judaist, is what i say a Jew.
    I know, and I'm saying you're wrong. That's not how Jews see it and it's not in fact how most people se and have seen it.
     
    It's largelse a result of the religious propaganda being spread around by fundamentalists (including Jewish ones) ove the last half-century or so.
     
    Read pretty well any modern novel that mentions Jews and the focus will be on their race not their religion.
    Originally posted by gcle2003


    You can't just take the fact that someone or some authority says someone is a Jew to indicate they are religious Jews. You're all the time producving circular arguments, basically:
    a) Jewish is a religious designation
    b) this person is a Jew
    c) therefore Jewish is a religious designation.
     


    But i cannot just take someone's opinion and ignore that of a 100, in which 100 there are many others of his/her kind.
    I don't know what you mean there at all. You can't mean most people think Jewish is a religious designation. How much reference is there to Shylock's religion in The Merchant of Venice? How much to Fagin's in Oliver Twist? Or to the religion of the Jewish villains in Buchan's books? Did the Nuremberg laws worry about religion or race?
     It's like i say, oh yeah i am a Christian and a Communist, which is absurd, because Communists are atheists.
    Not necessarily. But I don't want to start a side-issue.
    I can say that Communism is this and that, and ignore Marx in my own fantasy world, yet if you take me for granted ignoring everybody else ( the Communist Parties worldwide, those belonging to the parties worldwide, Marxists-Leninists, Maoists etc) then we end up with a chaotic world, where only individual opinions matter and that of the structures (which is nothing more than an organized total of individuals) ignored. We need common ground with acceptable definitions and Judaist is not one of them.
    Yes it is. 'Common ground with acceptable definitions means distinguishing clearly between race and religion, not confounding them. And Judaist is the common word for the religion.
  • Judaism (from the Greek Ioudaïsmos, derived from the Hebrew יהודה, Yehudah, "Judah"; in Hebrew: יַהֲדוּת, Yahedut, the distinctive characteristics of the Judean eáqnov ) is the religion of the Jewish people. ...
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism

  • A world religion tracing its origin to the Hebrew people of the ancient Middle-East, as documented in their religious writings, the Torah or Old ...
    en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Judaism

  • is the religion of the Jewish people. It is one of the first recorded monotheistic faiths and one of the oldest religious traditions still practiced today. The tenets and history of Judaism are the major part of the foundation of other Abrahamic religions, including Christianity and Islam.
    www.tvwiki.tv/wiki/Judaism

  • Religion developed among the ancient Hebrews.
    www.jeansasson.com/glossary_of_terms.htm


    • Originally posted by gcle2003


    'The industrial age'  has nothing to do with it. It has more to do with the Englightenment than anything else. However, it still means that 'Jewish' is not a religious designation. You can't say that 'Jewish' is a religious designation but some Jews are not Jewish, industrial age, enlightenment or whatever.


    I believe Enlightenment set the bases, but it was industrial age that spread systematically to the entire population ideas about ethnicity, nation, secularism etc. To put it briefly, the Ottoman Empire did not collapse in the Enlightenment age, but in the industrial age.

    What I can say is that Jewish is a religious designation but some Jews believe themselves otherwise.
    You can certainly say some people use Jewish as a religious designation. The point is that that is dangerous, inlammatory, and totally misleading, since the word has always indicated racial origin.
     
    Originally posted by gcle2003


    'Quite a few' in English English means 'lots'.


    Sorry, i was quite hasty when i was writing the reply. I even edited your previous topic without realizing it in the process.


    Originally posted by gcle2003



    The claim is racial descent. I don't know if the claim is valid or not, but that makes no difference. It's still a racial claim, whereas Yemeni and Russian are nationalities.


    Of course makes a difference whether it is valid or not,, because, without the religious designation and with a claim to a racial descent invalid, then there is no Jewish ethnos.
    That some claims to racial descent are invalid doesn't make them all invalid. A lot of people who claim to be Scots aren't.
     
    Originally posted by gcle2003

    So you admit that someone who does not follow the Jewish religion (Judaism, for ease of understanding) does not therefore stop being Jewish?


    I replied earlier to that with my example of Christian-Communist.
    Which unfortunately I failed to understand.

    Originally posted by gcle2003



    I have no idea what those pictures have to do with anything whatsoever. It is totally immaterial what anyone looks like. 


    You talked about mongrel people, and i wanted to present with these photos that modern Jews are as equally, if not more, a mongrel people as English.
     
    Photos don't prove a damned thing. The English on the whole look alike (more than some peoples). If anything that's because they're mongrel and come from a lot of intermarried groups.
     
    Not that it matters. I know brothers who don't look like each other. Putting out pictures the way you did here and people sadly so often do in other threads is just childish.


    Edited by gcle2003 - 05-Feb-2009 at 22:47
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    Originally posted by gcle2003

    I know, and I'm saying you're wrong. That's not how Jews see it and it's not in fact how most people se and have seen it.


    That's not how certain Jews see it.
     
    Originally posted by gcle2003


    It's largelse a result of the religious propaganda being spread around by fundamentalists (including Jewish ones) ove the last half-century or so.


    There is propaganda, one can hardly deny it. But this propaganda is based on existing material.
     
    Originally posted by gcle2003


    Read pretty well any modern novel that mentions Jews and the focus will be on their race not their religion.


    That is a very absolute statement, i would be very careful in your position before i post such a thing. Unless you have read all modern literature about Jews, or even literature which simply refers to Jews. But even if you had done such a thing, your reading does not necessarily mean that it's the only reading of the story. Give a text to 14 people and they will give you 14 different opinions.

    Originally posted by gcle2003



    I don't know what you mean there at all. You can't mean most people think Jewish is a religious designation. How much reference is there to Shylock's religion in The Merchant of Venice?


    In my experience ,yes, most people think of the term Jewish as a religious designation. Concerning Shylock, in the book The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Wordsworth editions, i do read signs of religiosity:

    First of all in Shylock's own words (I. III. 3-51):
    "Yes, to smell pork; to eat the habitation which your prophet the Nazarite conjured the devil into......but i will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you"

    " How like a fawning publican he looks!
    I hate him for he is a Christian!    "

    "He hates our sacred nation"

    I. III. 52-98

    "This Jacob from our holy Abram was"

    I. III. 153-II. I. 57

    " O father Abram, what these Christians are"

    Antonio
    " Hie thee, gentle Jew.
    [ Exit Shylock.
    The Hebrew will turn Christian: he grows kind."




    Originally posted by gcle2003


    Yes it is. 'Common ground with acceptable definitions means distinguishing clearly between race and religion, not confounding them. And Judaist is the common word for the religion.


    But they are inter-connected.You cannot separate them.


    Originally posted by gcle2003


    The point is that that is dangerous, inlammatory, and totally misleading, since the word has always indicated racial origin.


    That's your opinion. It was always a religious identity, and an ethnic one, but to a much lesser extent.



    Originally posted by gcle2003


    That some claims to racial descent are invalid doesn't make them all invalid. A lot of people who claim to be Scots aren't.


    If some claims  to racial descent are invalid, then the whole argument is being lost. It just complicates things and it just proves that descent does not play that much of a role.
     
    Originally posted by gcle2003


    Which unfortunately I failed to understand.


    I think i explained it quite well.

    Originally posted by gcle2003



    Photos don't prove a damned thing. The English on the whole look alike (more than some peoples). If anything that's because they're mongrel and come from a lot of intermarried groups.
     
    Not that it matters. I know brothers who don't look like each other. Putting out pictures the way you did here and people sadly so often do in other threads is just childish.


    Now, i will ignore the last words, which are an insult. You do realize that we enter the field of genetics right now, don't you? I cannot say i am an expert in that field, no. What i do know is that when you come  from a line of intermarried groups (which are very different, not similar), you will have certain characteristics from these groups in your physical aspect (not necessarily from all groups though). The greatest example would be the USA. By your argument, all Americans would look alike. Does this happen? HELL NO.
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    Originally posted by gcle2003

    Yes but the Israel-born sons of Jewish fathers are Jews. And merels practising Judaism won't get you in (at least not under this rule).

    No ... legally speaking, according to the Israeli constitution, you are not Jewish if only your father is.

    Converting to Judaism will grant you Jewish status in Israel, with the full rights and privileges that conveys.

    practising Judaism is not relevant to the question of being Jewish.

    Yes, it is. If you practice Judaism, you are a Jew and considered as one (legally in Israel, even).

    Furthermore, even Jews who do not practice Judaism are still defined as Jews by religious laws in the Halakha. Whether they practice or not, their status still has its origins and qualifications in a religious concept.

    Because usually racial descent is reckoned through the father (cf my exchange about this in the context of the British monarchy.)

    Through the mother is still racial.
     
    (What's really unusual is reckoning descent through the female line in an otherwise patriarchal society. But it's still racial.)
    It's not "racial" it's simple pedigree. But as far as it goes, matrilineal or partilineal is irrelevant. Patrilineal societies only reckon family names and descent that way. Membership/acceptance in the culture doesn't depend on the gender of the parent in most cases, and certainly not in the case of things like citizenship. If your mother is British, you're as British as someone whose father is British, even though it's a patrilineal society.
    The matrilineal/patrilineal business is a red herring here. The bequething of family names and such has very little to do with concepts of cultural affiliation or citizenship or nationality.

    Incidentally quite a lot of the Jewish characters in the Bible didn't practice Judaism, which is why God kept getting angry with them. But He still considered them Jews, so He was using a racial criterion. Smile

    I wouldn't say racial. It's still religious. A cult comes along and claims their deity made a pact with the peoples of tribes X, Y, and Z and everyone in it, and all their ancestors, must belong to the cult or they'll be cursed.

    If that's not religion, I don't know what is!

     
    It still remains true that if you are racially (in Jewish eyes) Jewish, then you are a Jew, whereas if you practise Judaism, you aren't necessarily.
    How can it "remain" true when it hasn't even been established as true at all?
    Israeli law does NOT recognize the children of Jewish fathers as "Jews" for legal purposes. It DOES recognize a convert. To get an identity card with the nationality status marked as "Jew", the law is that you must meet the definition in the Halakha. 
     
    "
    The Jewish community didn't consider him devout.
    The most radical elements didn't like him, this doesn't change the fact he was a practicing Jew, identified himself as such, and therefore was identified by other Roman authors as such. And that's how we come to know him as a Jew.
    If there was no diaspora then, then how come there were Jews in Alexandria at all?
    Hellenization.
    Now, as a general rule, I will also mention that most other identities are - or were at one time - artificially created as well, either by a religion, a powerful tribal warlord, a national state or what have you. The idea of "French" or "English" is something that was created. The French, for instance, were originally a collection of groups like Burgundians, Lombards, Aquitanians and so on; the identity was manufactured by banning the languages of these groups and establishing the langue d'oeil dialects as the official language, as well as an effort to suppress cultural expressions from these groups. In time, this created a national identity that did not previously exist.
    Similarly, the notion of a secular identity for Jews is a very recent concept, which began only with the Zionist movement in the 1800s. It simply did not exist prior to that. People of Jewish parentage who didn't practice Judaism, considered themselves German or English or French or what have you. 


    Edited by edgewaters - 06-Feb-2009 at 05:12
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    terörist

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    Posts: 4489     		  Quote Spartakus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Feb-2009 at 11:09
    Originally posted by edgewaters

    Now, as a general rule, I will also mention that most other identities are - or were at one time - artificially created as well, either by a religion, a powerful tribal warlord, a national state or what have you. The idea of "French" or "English" is something that was created. The French, for instance, were originally a collection of groups like Burgundians, Lombards, Aquitanians and so on; the identity was manufactured by banning the languages of these groups and establishing the langue d'oeil dialects as the official language, as well as an effort to suppress cultural expressions from these groups. In time, this created a national identity that did not previously exist.
    Similarly, the notion of a secular identity for Jews is a very recent concept, which began only with the Zionist movement in the 1800s. It simply did not exist prior to that. People of Jewish parentage who didn't practice Judaism, considered themselves German or English or French or what have you. 


    I just cannot articulate it better. I just can't!
    "There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. "
    --- Joseph Alexandrovitch Brodsky, 1991, Russian-American poet, b. St. Petersburg and exiled 1972 (1940-1996)
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    Posts: 1355     		  Quote Beylerbeyi Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Feb-2009 at 14:05
    No ... legally speaking, according to the Israeli constitution, you are not Jewish if only your father is.

    I am not sure about this. I happen to know at least one Israeli Jew who doesn't have a Jewish mother (although I don't know the details about their past, it could be the case that Israel recognising the decision of another state, as is the case for marriages). Also, I think Israel has no written constitution. 

    More generally, I know practising members of the Turkish Jewish community, who do not have Jewish matrilinear descent. It is definitely not impossible to be a Jew without your maternal line being all Jews in Turkey. Intercommunal marriages are increasingly common and the Jewish community is smaller than it used to be, so it would be really problematical if they were very strict on this. But note that earliest example I know of Jewish man marrying non-Jewish woman and the kids being accepted as Jews dates back to before Israel, so it is not a new phenomenon because the numbers of the community are declining.  
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