Apikorus

One other point regarding the "traitorous" status of messianics. Throughout history, and particularly during the Middle Ages, some of the most formidable enemies of the Jews were Jewish converts to Christianity: Paul de Santa Maria, Nicolas Donin, Pablo Cristiani, et al.

Anat

If the mother was Jewish by birth (regardless of her own beliefs and practices) or converted formally her children (born at any time in the former case or after her conversion in the latter) are considered Jewish at the time of their birth.

Anat

OTOH the original Saul/Paul is considered relatively 'good for the Jews' because by making Christianity different enough from Judaism and seeking converts among non-Jews he caused a decrease in the proselitising directed at Jews.

Apikorus

Anat, it seems one could just as well say that Paul was forced to take his message to gentiles because Christianity fizzled and failed among the Jews.

gnosis92

messy jews will probably be around 100 years from now. i wonder if it will be accepted then.

Soul Invictus

It looks like you're both explaining the same idea, so I guess I'll ask you both.

If faith isn't a criterion, how is one born Jewish? I can understand that someone may be Jewish by virtue or their mother being a Jew, but when Anat says if the mother was Jewish by birth (regardless of her own beliefs and practices) this implies one can be a Jew without the characteristics, so I want to understand how this is possible.

Wisdumb

There have been many findings in archaeology that suggest that early Jews structured their homes and communities in a way that resembled cultic behavior. Jews are no different genetically than most arabs and other semites in the region, is it just that their genetic pool became much more distinct due to their sticking together for such a long period of time. So basically Jews share genes with all semites yet have more specific ones in common with fellow jews. But of course many fled to europe and africa and other parts of the middle east so their gene pool changed dramtically over centuries.
Culturally it is a complicated question.

Anat

Soul Invictus, suppose a Jewish woman abandons Jewish beliefs and practices. She may have become an atheist, converted to some other religion or just doesn't care anymore. She has a daughter. According to the Orthodox view, this daughter is Jewish. With all likelihood, she may go through life unaware of this detail and live as a non-Jew. But if she were to find out that she has Jewish ancestry and at some point want to live as a Jew, an Orthodox rabbi would likely tell her that she does not need to convert, she was Jewish all along. Theoretically if this woman keeps living as a non-Jew, and has a daughter, who goes on to have a daughter etc many generations over, and some daughter many generations later would want to reclaim her Jewish heritage, if she could prove that her maternal lineage goes back to a Jewish woman she should be accepted without conversion. I don't think this would be the ruling in practice because of chances that the genealogy is inaccurate after so many generations (maybe one of the women was adopted and was never told about it, maybe someone was exchanged at the hospital, who knows).

J-D

I think this subject can be easier to understand if broken down into two parts.

Firstly, we can ask about how a person is identified as a member of a group. Secondly, we can ask about the basis of the identity of the group as a group.
The first must ultimately depend on the second, but I think it can be helpful to consider it first, and separately.

The answers to both questions for the specific case of the Jews is basically the same as for any other ethnic group: Mohawks, African-Americans, Mayans, Guarani, Masai, Somalis, Arabs, Serbs, Sorbs, Welsh, Basques, Baluchis, Tamils, Lao, Han, Koreans, …

The answer to the first question is, basically that people are members of a particular ethnic group if they are considered to be members of that ethnic group. This can be broken down into sub-questions: Do you consider that you are a member of the group? Do other members of the group consider that you are a member of the group? Do non-members of the group consider that you are a member of the group?

Consider: if you want to know whether a particular person is a Jew, what do you do? You ask. You might ask the person directly: Are you a Jew? Or, if you don’t want to do that, or if you’re interested in a public or historical figure, you might ask somebody else who knows, or knows about, the subject of your inquiry: Is X a Jew? And if you get the answer ‘Yes’, you’ll probably accept it.

This way of looking at the question does become problematic when there is disagreement about the identity of a particular individual as a Jew. If some people consider that X is a Jew, while others do not: Is X a Jew? The only precise way of answering the question in these problematic cases is by circumlocution. For example, was Oswald Rufeisen (Brother Daniel) a Jew? Answer: he considered himself a Jew, and the rabbinate held that according to Jewish law he was a Jew, but the Israeli courts ruled that he did not qualify as a Jew for the purposes of the Law of Return (because he had gone through a religious conversion, to Christianity).

If, in the case of any ethnic group, such problematic cases become too numerous, then the clear identity of the group as a group starts to break down. The concept of the Jews as an ethnic group (or any other ethnic group) is a useful one only to the extent that there is general agreement about who is, and who is not, a Jew; the more disagreement there is, the less useful the concept. There are debateable cases, but not enough to justify abandoning the concept.

Now I come to the second part of the subject. The first part can’t be complete without the second. The basis of the identity of the Jews as a group over time, just as with other ethnic groups, is descent. In other words, the usual way in which ethnic group identity is acquired is by being born into the ethnic group, as the child of people who are already members of that group. This does not, however, absolutely exclude the possibility of acquiring ethnic group membership/identity in other ways. In this respect an ethnic group resembles a family. Usually, people are born into families, but sometimes people are adopted into families. In the same way, it is possible for people to be ‘adopted’ into an ethnic group. The possibility of being so adopted, and the means by which adoption is implemented, might vary with the ethnic group. The way to tell whether the ‘adoption’ has been effective in a particular case is as suggested above: if, after your ‘adoption’ into the group, everybody considers that you’re a member of the group, then clearly you are. If there’s disagreement about whether you’ve become a member of the group, then the position just cannot be stated equally definitely.

There is still something missing from this account. If the Jews now, as a group, generally speaking, can be seen as the descendants of Jews from earlier times, and if those earlier Jews are seen as descendants of Jews from still earlier times, how is infinite regress to be avoided? There must have been some earliest group of Jews who were not descended from still earlier Jews. This is the question of ethnogenesis, the origin of ethnic groups. Most such groups had their ethnogenesis before extensive written records, and it’s just not possible to say with any confidence how they originated. What is clear is that ethnogenesis is not, historically speaking, an unusual phenomenon, given the number of ethnic groups which exist, or have existed in the past. Also, it is not necessary to be able to define the ethnogenesis of a group to confirm its present identity as an ethnic group or the membership in it of particular individuals.

Chris Weimer

I am a Jew. My mother was a Jew. Her mother is a Jew. Her mother was a Jew. Her mother was a Jew. Her mother was a Jew. However, my mother and grandmother were raised Catholic, and I'm an atheist.