Truth is, if we hadn’t kicked their behinds around the map for 2000 years and lied our asses off, there probably wouldn’t be an Israel.

Even atheists hate Jews, so that won’t solve the problem. I think they prefer the atheist Jews but that’s still just amounts to a smart “Jew.” Practicing Christians are held to a different light (no bad genetics involved.)

Let’s face it no one is nearly as hysterical about the invasion of India by Muslims 1000 yrs ago or their on going torture and assaults on Hindus (an estimated 2.5 million slaughtered in ’71.) Hardly a blip on the radar.

Can it be Christians like and respect the power game? Say what you will about the crusades but it was one hell of a party. We smashed the Cathars into obliteration but those damn persistent Jews…

john t.

Listen, Jewish is both a religion AND an ethnicity. Jews have been so secluded in the past 2 millenia that we’re actually a large extended family. Especially ashkenazi jews with their own genetic diseases (Tai-Zacks).

FYI, there were Christian (!) Jews (I know, I’m rubbing my eyes too) that were also sent to death camps in WWII, you can escape your synagogue, but you can’t escape your heritage :/

““As an Ashkenazi Jew, I haven’t suffered the inoculation of religion that non-Ashkenazi Jews receive more vehemently.”
Could you elaborate on that one ? I don’t see the difference between an Ashkenazi atheist and a non-Ashkenazi atheist…”

Well, there’s a lot of Jewish sects in Israel, many of them highly fundamentalist – as in the Ha’redim (or “ultra-orthodox” as I’ve heard them called in English) and, well, any crackpot orthodox Jew.

The good thing about Israel is that his country puts religiosity with that cat-in-the-dumpster kind of piggy greed that’s been a survival trait in Jews for millenia – we’d do ANYTHING if it helps us survive – so we’re more scientifically inclined than most of the countries near us (which are, well, enemies. They don’t need science, they got numbers)

“As an Ashkenazi Jew, I haven’t suffered the inoculation of religion that non-Ashkenazi Jews receive more vehemently.”
Could you elaborate on that one ? I don’t see the difference between an Ashkenazi atheist and a non-Ashkenazi atheist…

Thanks to Obi for the links ))

Obi wrote September 2, 2008 at 7:52 pm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheist_Jew
And if that’s not enough,”The Jewish people is an ethnoreligious community rather than solely a religious grouping…“.
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_Jew

I knew some of that (nature of Rabbinical authority) but the political aspect as well as the ideological split was unknown to me. I appreciate the insight and clarification.

There were times when descent was patrilineal, at other times it was matrilineal. I dont know why or when they changed, sitting here, but I imagine the reasons for that change were social and communal and perhaps political.

The authority for these changes came from that fact that in Judaism, authoritative interpretations rest with the current generations rabbinate. There was always, of course, an effort by those rabbis to retrospectively intepret the scriptures as supporting of this position, but the community always (and still does) view the current rabbinate as having legitimate authority to do so.

I.e., there is no solo scriptura idea in Judaism. Their model is more similar to that of the Catholic Church, wherein the church Fathers (and the current Pope) is seen as having the authority to set official interpretations of the Bible.

Currently, the dispute within Judaism regarding this issue is between the conservative and orthodox (which recognize the most-recently-”traditional” matrilineal descent) and Reform (mainly in the US, but comprising a very large number of Jews with a lot of financial clout) which, true to more liberal values, recognizes both matrilineal and patrilineal descent. And the issue is important because of Israels “right of return” — i.e., any Jew in the world can get offical citizenship to Israel anytime they wish, if they move there…*providing* that they meet Orthodox (who have influence in Israel) standards of lineage.

Okay, because it came up and I have been eternally curious, lets discuss the Jewish lineage idea being matrilineal (passing from mother to child). I asked a Rabbi about this once, and she told me that it probably stemmed from the book of Ezra, where the children of foreign women were sent away when the Temple was rebuilt. The thought is that the Jews would not have sent away Jewish children, therefore the children of non-Jewish mothers must not be considered Jewish. The problem with this explanation is that it neglects the Jewish Apocryphal writings. The book of Tobit, written after Ezra but about 200 years before Jesus, clearly discusses Jewish lineage along the male line and not the female. If the matrilineal philosophy originated with Ezra, why reverse it 300 years later and then back again? Can anyone help me out here?

I guess you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the Jews for Jesus group that frequently proselytizes on my university campus.