Once a Jew, always a Jew?

[DavidDvorkin]

In the U.S.A., six million people call themselves Jews, but 22% of them say they have no religion. Many are atheists. In what sense are they Jews? I say, in no sense at all.

http://www.dvorkin.com/oajew/

[jberryhill]

1. "In what sense are they Jews?"

In the sense that they identify as such, and are recognized as such by their community.

[immoderate]

2. In the sense that "when they come for the Jews," they'll be rounded up.

--imm

[DavidDvorkin]

3. That's discussed in the book.

[SusanCalvin]

4. What reply 1 and 2 said.

Not sure of point, and don't feel it's worth visiting link to find out.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. Judaism is a religion and an ethnicity and a philosophy (of sorts)

Many different combinations and permutations of those three found in the wild.

[hedda_foil]

6. Provocative. I just downloaded it. Thanks, David.

[DavidDvorkin]

10. Thanks, hedda_foil.

[rjsquirrel]

7. Wow, such bigotry on DU

Nothing uglier than anti-Semitism spouted by Jews against fellow Jews. I am an atheist who despises the conduct of Israel.

Chief Rabbi Dvorkin of DU has spoken. Bigot.

[Bluenorthwest]

8. So this is like 'who are the REAL Americans'? You have a litmus test runing?

Religious people often have these crazy notions about others not being 'really Christians' or whatever. 'Yes they are Baptists, but they are Sunni Baptists and might as well be heathen.'

[Hortensis]

9. I think it's just about who's a Jew. My husband is because he says he is, David.

When he says he is not a Jew, then he will not be. But feel free to have your opinion.

Blue, you know, a lot of people don't just like to unscrew the inscrutable. They do that so that they roll it around on a table, hold it up to their eyes, ponder the threads, and then spend the rest of their lives arguing about whether a screw is still a screw if it's unscrewed or not screwing something, or more intrinsically a screw on its own, etc.

Me, I'm the type who dislike fussing over questions with no definitive answers. If I can't look it up and then check a, b, c, or d, I move on to the next question.

[Matariki]

11. WTF?

[Igel]

12. Try this one.

Latinos speak Spanish.

What if you're a 2nd gen Latino and don't speak Spanish. You can't possibly be Latino.

In what sense am I Irish? I don't like Irish food, I don't really much like anything Gaelic. I can't be Irish. Perhaps I'm something else and don't know it?

It's where my genes prowled for a long time, Ireland.

Remember: First, if you buy the narrative, being Jewish means you're in a certain family. It's like saying you've disowned your mother so you no longer bear her DNA. Socially constructed reality is fine, but at some point we start calling that "delusional."

[DavidDvorkin]

13. I'm speaking very specifically of American secular Jews

Indistinguishable in every way from their non-Jewish neighbors. That's the group in question, so your other examples are irrelevant.

Since I was born an Ashkenazi Jew, like the vast majority of US Jews, that means that the great majority of my DNA is Eastern European, not Middle Eastern. I have more in common genetically with non-Jewish Eastern Europeans than I do with people in the Middle East. I'm being realistic. Those who imagine that they're members of a tribe are the ones who are deluding themselves.

[starroute]

14. I was raised in the fourth branch of Judaism - Jewish agnostic

That's how my father proudly described it and I never had reason to doubt him. Jewish ethics. A pinch of Talmudic reasoning. The imperative to set the world right while standing by the underdog.

You might more appropriately ask what it means to be a Jew in a time when Israel has done its best to hijack the right to define Jewishness. But that's another argument and one that I'm not about to get into at this hour.

[DavidDvorkin]

15. The admirable parts of those ethics

Are universal.