"Beating" up on Israel?

A belief that God singled out a special tribe and gave them and their descendants specific obligations in return for benefits that would accrue to those descendants. It was only their obligation and only their benefit. No-one else could get in on the benefits (seen as earthly ones at that time anyway) and no-one else could take on the obligations.

I quoted you Spinoza from the Netherlands as an example. He's one of the few people before the contemporary/modern world we can be certain (a) did not believe in Judaism and (b) was regarded as Jewish by the people around him, including the Jews, and indeed by everyone who has ever written about him since. No, we can hardly be certain of that at all, considering Spinoza was a practicing member of the religion until he was excommunicated! He did not voluntarily abandon the religion, he had to be forced out.

Of course he voluntarily abandoned his religion. It was his works and their content that led to his being excommunicated. You don't excommunicate someone from a religion for practising it.

 

Marx is a different example, in that his parents converted to Christianity, but they and he continued to be viewed as Jews. I could go on for ages.

Like Disraeli, another example but a bit more modern. Yes, he's 19th century and thus serves as a very poor example of a secular Jewish identity occuring prior to the 19th century.

I didn't even suggest he was an example of a secular Jewish identity prior to the 19th century. In fact he wasn't even secular, but a Christian. But still a Jew. As was, for instance, Georg Cantor.

 

I never denied, in fact IIRC I first pointed out, that the non-observant Jew became more and more common after the enlightenment, as happened with many other religions, which is how so most of the original Zionists came to be non-observant.

How come I can keep providing these examples if I'm wrong? No-one seems to be providing counter-examples. It's kind of difficult to provide an instance of a thing that didn't exist.

It's kind of difficult to justify your case for blurring two different categorisations and trying to combine them into one.

He doesn't in Israel. He is respondible for determining the facts, but the fact that someone has a Jewish mother makes that person a Jew. It's not a religious test even if the person applying the test is a cleric. That's not all there is to the test. You've just singled out the one element that is (partially) ethnic,

What on earth do you mean 'partially' ethnic. How can descent be anything else but ethnic? (In the common contemporary sense of the word anyway.)

ignoring the fact that the Chief Rabbinate grants Jewish nationality to converts$

You have an example? Or is that something else that doesn't exist?

 

That's a rare situation, and is somewhat like a Catholic becoming a priest. It requires in effect proof that the individual has been accepted by God as a sharer in the covenant. It has very little indeed to do with the normal use of the word 'Jew'. Not everyone pays attention to what Chief Rabbis assert.

and has refused it to the children of Jewish fathers.

On the grounds that the ethnic descent is questionable.

Besides, what is a religious office doing making any decisions about the status of citizens in a purely secular state? Obviously this is a logical contradiction.

Personally I never claimed Israel was a purely secular state: IIRC I said it was essentially racist. It's not terribly material because Israel is not Jewry, and Jewry is not Israel. The question is the preferred meaning of the word 'Jew' not anything about the type of state Israel is.

 

Britain is certainly not a purely secular state: neither is Denmark or Sweden or Luxembourg, to take a quick few examples. Even the USA is not de facto secular, whatever the de jure situation.

No need to, yes, but that's what happens. People will probably always generalise from the particular to the general. What people do with the facts is one thing, what the facts are is another matter entirely.    So too are Jew and Judaist, even though there is one country (in which only a minority of the world's Jews live) that is both largely Jewish in population and has religious courts I've never even heard the word "Judaist" before. Can you tell me its etymology and the earliest known occurence of such a distinction?

The etymology is obvious. Webster only gives it as a noun derved from Judaism, which is reasonable, with no date. That's a 1970 edition of Webster, so it's certainly been around for a while. I remember it being the word for a follower of Judaism when I was an undergraduate 50-odd years ago, and studying such stuff.

As far as I can tell, "Judaism" didn't even enter the English language until the 13th century,

There wasn't any English language until the 13th century. The term is older than that in the languages English derives from. Judaist is such an obvious extension, asking for its etymology is like having the etymology for 'look' and asking for the etymology for 'looker'.

and in that case, it was part of a text defining a tax on all Jews ...

Who were almost certainly identified racially at that time. Even though secular Jews at that time would have been no more common than secular Englishmen.

and Judaist, I cannot find any sort of etymological information on at all, other than that it (obviously) comes from Judaism. Probably quite recently.

Why 'probably'? If you have an '-ism' can an '-ist' be far away? In fact yba you have an 'ism' without an 'ist' to believe in it?

It strikes me that if there has historically been a distinction between 'Jew' and 'Judaist', then there would be distinct terms dating back alot further than the last few years ... it's no coincedence that Jew refers both to an ethnic and religious identity, because Jew is an ethno-religious identity!

IIRC the Byzantines referred to Western (Roman) Christians as Franks. Similarly the West referred to the Byzantine religion as 'Greek'. In a period of history when religious and racial identities tended to run in parallel, confusion of ethnic and religious designations was likely to be common. cf also Albigensian for a territorial designation used as a religious one, or Moravian.

 

There is no question that some people use 'Jewish' both as a religious designation and as an ethnic one. The question is whether this is justifiable and desirable. Using 'Judaism' and 'Judaist' (and 'Judaic', which goes back to the Latin) helps clarify the position.

No! On the grounds that it doesn't fit the halakhic definition of a Jew. That's the law in Israel - a Jew is defined by the halakhic definition. 

Law of Return, section 4 B - "For the purposes of this Law, "Jew" means a person who was born of a Jewish mother or has become converted to Judaism and who is not a member of another religion."

That's the law as written in Israel about who is a Jew. The children of mothers only or converts, and only if they do not belong to "another" religion!! This is in plain language, and crystal clear!

And it's not just Israeli law, either:

A Jew is any person whose mother was a Jew or any person who has gone through the formal process of conversion to Judaism. 

It is important to note that being a Jew has nothing to do with what you believe or what you do. A person born to non-Jewish parents who has not undergone the formal process of conversion but who believes everything that Orthodox Jews believe and observes every law and custom of Judaism is still a non-Jew, even in the eyes of the most liberal movements of Judaism, and a person born to a Jewish mother who is an atheist and never practices the Jewish religion is still a Jew, even in the eyes of the ultra-Orthodox. In this sense, Judaism is more like a nationality than like other religions, and being Jewish is like a citizenship. See What Is Judaism? 

This has been established since the earliest days of Judaism. In the Torah, you will see many references to "the strangers who dwell among you" or "righteous proselytes" or "righteous strangers." These are various classifications of non-Jews who lived among Jews, adopting some or all of the beliefs and practices of Judaism without going through the formal process of conversion and becoming Jews. Once a person has converted to Judaism, he is not referred to by any special term; he is as much a Jew as anyone born Jewish.

And another:

The problem, the way I see it, isn't that people have a problem when they are defined as a religion, or defined as a race. The problem is that they don't fit neatly into the kinds of categories other groups do, and people have a really hard time accepting that. They want to pigeonhole them into categories they don't belong in and don't identify with, like ramming a square peg into a round hole ... they're not strictly an ethnic group nor strictly a religious group, as indicated by their own views on the matter (views which have been adopted as law in the Jewish state). Ethno-religious is a nice compromise and is in accord with how they describe their own identity.