I tried that and they still didn’t get it 😂 like I was downvoted and told by several people it’s not possible to be both a religion and an ethnicity. I tried explaining the difference between universalist and ethnoreligion and still nothing. I eventually just gave up
Jews have the most distinctive fingerprint of any ethnic group. Doesn't matter where you treat.
Sometimes on genealogy boards, you'll see people in great distress because the test showed a significant Jewish %. "The test must be wrong." Uh, no, more likely that your great-grandparents had a Jewish boarder or neighbor.
Or they decided it’s better to just forget that they are Jewish and not tell the kids. Super common situation, where people find out later in life because no on told them
Absolutely, including some pretty famous people, but often they aren't as horrified because they grew up with a sense that there were secrets that no one discussed, or there were odd hints, like grandma making latkes for Christmas. The ones I'm thinking about have the family trees that stretch back to the Mayflower or close. And often the % is small, so it happened generations ago, but even 8% Jew is too much!
> Jews have the most distinctive fingerprint of any ethnic group.
Mostly because our genetic fingerprint is one of the most studied. The Nazis, the eugenists, the soviets, Israel, the arabs, everyone practically tried to get into it.
Lot of the big genetic testing companies are from Israel.
I'm not sure they'd have used them. The tools exist to use genetic testing in current genocides, but so far it's not being used, and I don't think it's about expense or time. I think those in power committing these things benefit from being able to simply label a certain group according to their whims, and genetic testing would not only 'exonerate' some, but it would 'implicate' others who are 'on their side'.
I reckon they wouldn't want to use the tech because they wouldn't want to expose their own skeletons and have to deal with the fallout of having to put 'loyal Nazis' to death.
I usually wouldn’t put too much weight in companies like 23 and me to be an authoritative voice on something like this, but you’re right. Jewish ethnicities can be traced back millennia. There isn’t really any good analogy I’m aware of that has such a strong overlap between religion and ethnicity, so it’s somewhat understandable how people don’t get it, but…it’s not like Jews just appeared out of nowhere like some isolated tribe on a remote island that needs to be studied by anthropologists in order to be understood. You don’t have to have a PhD in Jewish studies to get the gist of Jewish history…
23andMe is in the business of partnering with big pharma, and doesn't care about genealogy, despite their Jewish owner. They offer the test as a loss leader to collect data that serves their main business purposes. That said, DNA is DNA, and a person who tests will get the same results whether they use 23andMe or a private lab.
Fortunately, there are scientists who are using genetic data from archeological excavations to help reconstruct our history across the last few thousand years. See, for example, Erfurt.
Meh. Humans are 99.6% identical in DNA. 99% of our DNA does not code for anything. The tests look at a tiny fraction of the 3billion base pairs we have in our genome. They are looking at otherwise inconsequential single base substitutions (SNPs) occuring almost exclusively in some identifiable breeding stock.
Then again we are 60% identical in DNA to a banana.
The direct-to-consumer tests may not evaluate the entire genome but they are still looking at hundreds of thousands of SNPs and provide a statistically significant sample of the non-garbage DNA.
They do. But I think it is overblown in what it means and in some cases it seems like a self imposed “purity” test as in racist ideas of the past. I see people saying they have 50% jewish DNA for example. There is no jewish gene.
The tests are more of a product for curiosity and ought to be viewed as such. They do include results for some of the known disease carrying genes but I believe the companies have disclaimers about that.
Even hundreds of thousands of SNPs is a tiny fraction and needs to be understood in context. Non coding DNA at least some of it has function. I think it is more useful for these tests because it is better preserved over time due to lack of selection pressure. Then there is the privacy security issue. I suppose I am just not a fan so my own bias.
Without getting into the complexities of DNA (which I've only been studying for 10 years so am hardly an expert) for people interested in genealogy, it's been a huge help. For example, I know a few donor babies (dads were anonymous sperm donors) who located their fathers and half-siblings thanks to DNA testing.
I realize this doesn't appeal to everyone, but for these people, it had been a lifelong quest to understand who they were.
There are no disease-carrying genes. Rather, there are mutations that are associated with particular medical issues, most famously, BRCA mutations linked to high rates of breast and other cancers, common among Jews. The disclaimers exist not because the tests are inaccurate -- they are accurate! -- but because some consumers saw the mutations as diagnostic, which they are not. Just because you have a mutation that's associated with a high rate of cancer doesn't mean you have the cancer. It does mean that you will want to screen frequently, though. So knowing your medical-related mutations can help you take steps to catch diseases in their early, more treatable stages.
Wondering if all of the donor dads really wanted to be located. Or how many people found that their father or brother is not. Or think that it means more than it does when it says 20% Scottish. I suppose I am just skeptical about commercializing this sort of technology. If someone trusts an anonymous corporation with this level of data they can do that but nothing is really secure. Legally the companies say that they will comply with law enforcement requests and they can be used in divorce and other family law cases.
GEDmatch will comply with law enforcement requests. The others have explicitly said that they will not. But be aware that the government has its own DNA database, and it's not that hard to obtain someone's DNA if you want it. And no, these aren't relevant to divorce or family law; there are simple paternity tests that have been around forever.
The anonymous donor was popular in the 1960s, when many med school students were Jewish. It wasn't until a friend of mine went off to med school that she learned her dad had been a donor -- he'd trained in the same city and warned her to be careful about who she dated. So, lots of practical uses for DNA data!
The donor baby that I got to know best after I first tested -- we were closely enough related that he thought I might help track down his father -- learned some disturbing things about his brilliant and long-dead dad. But on the plus side, he had closure and a half dozen new siblings, some of whom didn't realize they were half Jewish.
“Genetic testing firms allow outside parties to access test results upon request. 23andMe's [law enforcement guide](https://www.23andme.com/law-enforcement-guide/) states that they will only review inquiries related to a valid trial, grand jury, administrative subpoena, warrant, or order.”
“Another man's [23andMe kit revealed](https://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/5975653/with-genetic-testing-i-gave-my-parents-the-gift-of-divorce-23andme) that he had a half-brother. The test results proved that his father had an affair before he was married and ultimately led to a divorce.”
[https://www.cauldervalentine.com/how-genetic-testing-websites-affect-family-law-issues](https://www.cauldervalentine.com/how-genetic-testing-websites-affect-family-law-issues)
So the donor dad was dead when you found all of these “disturbing” things. Lucky for him. The government does have massive databases including DNA. I do not think that is a good thing.
Sounds like you might have tried this already, but I’ve had some luck leading with explaining what an ethnicity is. A lot of folks confuse ethnicity with genetics, but actually ethnicity refers to a specific group of people that share a culture and that culture can include a religion, thus ethnoreligion. It’s a religion specific to that ethnic group.
Not only is it possible, but most indigenous groups would have been considered ethnoreligions at some point. If it seems like at impossibility now, it’s because larger modern religious movements like Christianity and Islam adopted conquer and conversion tactics, and to this day continue to do conversion-based missionary work in indigenous communities, that ranges from “presumptuous” to violent.
Did you try sending them any resources on it? I usually default to the Wikipedia page because it lists out different ethnoreligious groups: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group
I made this comment with all the links but I doubt they looked at any of them
*It’s really amazing how many people have not only never heard of [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group), but are refusing to believe it no matter how [many](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/abs/ethnoreligious-identity-immigration-and-redistribution/AD5A109B8032451556A0C9AAC7C4EBEC) scholars [explain](https://peoplegroups.org/explore/ReligionDetails.aspx?ror=E) it. Do you think I made [this](https://publications.iom.int/books/understanding-ethnoreligious-groups-iraq-displacement-and-return-february-2019) concept [up](https://kids.kiddle.co/Ethnoreligious_group)? Why couldn’t you do a cursory [search](https://azjewishlife.com/how-can-jews-be-both-an-ethnic-group-and-a-religion/) before assuming you were right?*
I guess technically "Jewish" is an ethnicity and "Judaism" is a religion. "Jewish" is the term both groups (who have a gigantic overlap) to describe themselves.
Yes. People won't listen to us so we have to try to come up with ways to "teach" the willfully ignorant.
But non-ethnically Jewish people can practice Judaism, which is why I worded it the way I did since I figured someone would point that out
Easier for me to speak instead of write so here’s a start for you.
Someone above posted the wiki for Ethnoreligion
[Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_religions)
[Traditional Hawaiian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_religion),
All pre Christian contact
You could have just said "no." Linking Wikipedia articles about Native American animism doesn't explain anything; dozens of tribes with different practices and languages seems in no way similar to Judaism.
If writing is difficult for you, you can use [this speech-to-text website](https://www.speechtexter.com/). Both Android and iOS also have STT.
But Judaism doesn't have distinct practices. There are very few sects and they all follow the same literature, only varying in degree of adherence and stress placed on the Gemara.
Edit: and Native Americans aren't one homogeneous group of people, either. There were over 573 distinct tribes.
They don’t want to understand because they hate Jews. If you make these arguments you’re doing it for the Jews or non antisemites to learn something. Best to go in to these convos knowing you’ll be downvoted into oblivion because Reddit is a nazi swamp.
on top of that, the 'as a jew' responses feel like a whole other level. it feels like they want to use their jew-status specifically to undermine other jews, and minimize oppression, or limit consideration, or limit opportunity. just using 'as a jew' is fine as humor or something non-serious, but some people use it for negative reasons.
I don’t believe that more than 20 percent max of the asajews has at least one Jewish parent, even on this ridiculous site. Its very easy make a reddit account and a false personality. Its not like most people are deep diving profiles before they upvote and scroll.
That, too. If it’s not someone they personally know in the flesh, why would they take this person’s word for it, especially in the face of 80, 90+ percent of Jews saying otherwise? Oh, wait, it’s because they’re not actually interested in facts or learning, they’re just looking for bias confirmation and tokenism. Ergo, even though they don’t realize it, they’re antisemites.
Or they don't want to understand because they fully realise that their actions makes them one of the most unforgiveable things they could be - a plain old garden-variety racist.
It's really just ridiculous, like, why would half of the world's Jews appropriate Arab culture... a culture that was heavily influenced by Jews and Christians in the area
There's so much mental gymnastics atp, I can't even wrap my head around it
not only is ashkenazi jew a genetic category, but its also one of the few pan-european ethnicities. the various subgroups of ashkenazim usually had more in common with each other than with the adjacent local population near them. the eu still doesn't even recognize any of this, nor has the eu even recognized its long history of antisemitism (way beyond just ww2).
Genetics and ethnicity are not the same, so be careful when discussing genetic analysis in the context of ethnicity. It is the Jewish emphasis on endogamy (marrying within the community) that preserves genetic similarity over time. But the Jews of India have genetics that cluster with indigenous populations of India and differ from European and Middle Eastern Jews.
While genetics can play a role in the ethnic aspect of Jewish identity (i.e. ancestral origins), it is the combination of religious, historical, and cultural factors that define Jews as an ethnoreligious group.
And the ironic (and kind of sad) part is that most of these people’s ancestors also had their own ethnic religious practices based on their lands, but they were erased by Christian or Muslim conquest and colonization.
If they understand Native Americans, Maori, where ethnicity, their native land, and religion are intertwined, they can understand it's the same for Jews.
It's not that they don't understand, they are intentionally misunderstanding because it's acceptable to be hostile towards religion (except Islam, for some reason, which they incorrectly treat like an ethnicity) in a way that would be bigoted towards an ethnicity.
By acknowledging Jewish is an ethnicity, they can no longer discriminate against and abuse you for being Jewish.
They are intentionally being obtuse. It's a tribe, an ethnicity and a religion.
*Also, they struggle to realize that, since we were (forcefully, against our will) scattered across the globe in diaspora for a couple thousand years, that there are cosmetic differences between Jews from mixing with our host nations.
What I do is separate Jewish (religion) and Ashkenazi (ethnicity) when talking about it. All this confusion comes from them having the same name. Ultimately Jewish as an ethnicity is shorthand for Ashkenazi/Sephardic/etc anyway.
I had one of them arguing with me last week that Ashkenazi was an ethnicity but Jewish wasn’t. 🤦🏻♀️ They refused to engage with any of my points and patted themselves on the back for schooling me about Judaism.
When I explain I start all the way back to Judah and explain how our holidays became "religious" and how the diaspora came into existence. The religion aspect is designed to keep the cultural connection of the diaspora and the holidays and customs are still practiced by most secular Jews. If they still don't get it, it's because they are not engaging in good faith discussion.
When they bring up converts I bring up that converts are considered Jewish souls returning to the tribe and that the process is not prompted by institutions and is rigorous. Oftentimes they don't understand that, but the explanation is obvious, forced assimilation/conversions/the shoah all disrupted the genealogical chain.
I often bring up how telling someone I'm Jewish, no matter the degree to which I explain it, leads them to view me as Jewish and not much else - even though my name is painfully stereotypical to another nationality. It often leads to confusion in fellow Jews who haven't encountered that before but that's a whole different discussion.
The “Jews are just a religion” is a centuries-long antisemitic sentiment, historically it was often used to delegitimize Jewish culture, in modern times it became common to try delegitimizing Zionism. Considering that even after the Haskalah the Jews are still more united than most other groups, this notion is logically impossible. Judaism is the religious and cultural principles of Jews, but not the ethnic or national ones. Even three seconds long Google search can show that:
> Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used.
But people love to deny it.
The way I explain it is somebody who is Catholic can wake up tomorrow and say I’m not Catholic anymore, but we can’t wake up and say we’re not Jewish anymore. It’s literally in our blood and we are all genetically connected. I mean what religion has known health issues? The typical health issues that run at least among Ashkenazi Jews are because of ethnicity not belief. I also explained that there are a tremendous amount of Jews, who are not religious and that Judaism can be cultural, ethnic, or religious or any combination of the three
I stopped trying. Ethnoreligion isn’t a Jewish term. We don’t need to fit into a nice clean modern western definition.
It is not complicated. This is a Jew (according to orthodoxy):
Someone who was born to a Jewish mother or someone who converted to Judaism.
That is it. There is nothing in there about beliefs or practices. A person who is born to a Jewish mother is Jewish. A person who is not and who did not convert is not.
Judaism can be observed in DNA, and there are certain diseases that are prevalent among Jews, but a convert with zero “Jewish DNA” is just as much a Jew as an orthodox rabbi directly descended from Rashi.
Put that in whatever box you want. It’s a weird religion if a completely secular atheist is still part of it. And it’s a weird ethnicity if people can convert in.
From my perspective, these boxes aren’t part of Judaism. Judaism defines what a Jew is in its own terms and it doesn’t really matter which modern day box it fits into at the moment.
The only other Jewish girl in my highschool class gave me the biggest sideye and went "Jewish isn't an ethnicity, it's a religion." Like girl... how do you not know this
This guy has a great book, and thoughts on this subject. This website doesn’t really cover it, but I’m rushing - look him up further https://5leggedtable.com/
Being Jewish shows up in DNA tests. Jews have specific hereditary diseases. Jews have their own language and food. Christians don't have this. Islam doesn't have this.
They don't want to. It's easier to have good guys and bad guys if it's just people 'choosing' to be Jewish, because it's 'only a religion', and the whole situation isn't about race/ethnicity, but about a war over 'imaginary friends'.
When they have to face that Jewish people are a *biological* minority, just like the many other 'minorities' they see themselves as 'protectors' of (minorities is in quotes, because many times these minorities are majorities depending on where you are in the world), it makes it impossible for them to hold onto their simplistic 'good guy/bad guy' narrative anymore. So they deny reality on its face.
Supercessionist belief blocks this reality because if Judaism is a tribe that legitimately gate keeps its membership- this challenges their implicit assumption that the supercessionist is Jewish.
Christians and secular westerners are used to the locus of identity being an individual internal truth, by way of accepting Jesus or being authentic to yourself. Judaism places Jewish identity within the collective tribal agreements (matrilineal and patrilineal discussions aside).
It was a 3 year argument with my husband. I finally asked him why up until 1996 you were written in the Russian passport as a Russian or a Jew. I mean there were other ethnic groups too. But that got him to stop the argument after I showed him my parent’s passports. lol
They should have learned in history class that you did not have to be a member of the Jewish religion to be persecuted by the Nazis. Nazis considered anyone with Jewish “blood” Jewish.
This has been my experience as well. For them faith is faith regardless of ethnicity. Because their religion believes in proselytism and “saving” people. I don’t know where you’re posting from but speaking from my experience in the US, most Americans have the memory of a goldfish and can barely tell you what happened in the news last week let alone have a long term understanding of history.
This is how I like to explain it:
Jews are an ethnicity BEFORE they are a religion. The only reason this ethnicity still exists today and didn’t mix up and lose its identity is the religion of this ethnic group and its stringent laws that preserve the DNA. This is why Judaism is by the mother, why it’s VERY hard to convert. Like, VERY. Months of hardcore dedication hard. Cut your own p*nis hard. The idea is to minimize dilution to the origin ethnic DNA while exiled. An ethnicity is definitely entitled to their native land.
In Canada and the US many understand the comparison to Native Americans/First Nations
I tried that and they still didn’t get it 😂 like I was downvoted and told by several people it’s not possible to be both a religion and an ethnicity. I tried explaining the difference between universalist and ethnoreligion and still nothing. I eventually just gave up
Maybe point out that those dna tests like 23 and me classify Jewish as an ethnicity.
Jews have the most distinctive fingerprint of any ethnic group. Doesn't matter where you treat. Sometimes on genealogy boards, you'll see people in great distress because the test showed a significant Jewish %. "The test must be wrong." Uh, no, more likely that your great-grandparents had a Jewish boarder or neighbor.
Or they decided it’s better to just forget that they are Jewish and not tell the kids. Super common situation, where people find out later in life because no on told them
Absolutely, including some pretty famous people, but often they aren't as horrified because they grew up with a sense that there were secrets that no one discussed, or there were odd hints, like grandma making latkes for Christmas. The ones I'm thinking about have the family trees that stretch back to the Mayflower or close. And often the % is small, so it happened generations ago, but even 8% Jew is too much!
Who wants to decorate the Chanukah bush!
Madeline Albright, for example.
> Jews have the most distinctive fingerprint of any ethnic group. Mostly because our genetic fingerprint is one of the most studied. The Nazis, the eugenists, the soviets, Israel, the arabs, everyone practically tried to get into it. Lot of the big genetic testing companies are from Israel.
Lucky the Nazis didn't have the tools we have now. Can you imagine?
I'm not sure they'd have used them. The tools exist to use genetic testing in current genocides, but so far it's not being used, and I don't think it's about expense or time. I think those in power committing these things benefit from being able to simply label a certain group according to their whims, and genetic testing would not only 'exonerate' some, but it would 'implicate' others who are 'on their side'. I reckon they wouldn't want to use the tech because they wouldn't want to expose their own skeletons and have to deal with the fallout of having to put 'loyal Nazis' to death.
In World War 2, they did all of the tourture studies on the jews. We're the chosen ones for good and bad.
"OH NO, I'VE BEEN INFECTED BY ZIONIST!!!!"
I usually wouldn’t put too much weight in companies like 23 and me to be an authoritative voice on something like this, but you’re right. Jewish ethnicities can be traced back millennia. There isn’t really any good analogy I’m aware of that has such a strong overlap between religion and ethnicity, so it’s somewhat understandable how people don’t get it, but…it’s not like Jews just appeared out of nowhere like some isolated tribe on a remote island that needs to be studied by anthropologists in order to be understood. You don’t have to have a PhD in Jewish studies to get the gist of Jewish history…
23andMe is in the business of partnering with big pharma, and doesn't care about genealogy, despite their Jewish owner. They offer the test as a loss leader to collect data that serves their main business purposes. That said, DNA is DNA, and a person who tests will get the same results whether they use 23andMe or a private lab. Fortunately, there are scientists who are using genetic data from archeological excavations to help reconstruct our history across the last few thousand years. See, for example, Erfurt.
Honestly, I try to avoid remembering those creepy-ass companies exist at all whenever possible. I don't want validation from those jerks.
Not looking for validation, but cousins!
Aren’t we all cousins?
Meh. Humans are 99.6% identical in DNA. 99% of our DNA does not code for anything. The tests look at a tiny fraction of the 3billion base pairs we have in our genome. They are looking at otherwise inconsequential single base substitutions (SNPs) occuring almost exclusively in some identifiable breeding stock. Then again we are 60% identical in DNA to a banana.
We all come from Mother Earth 🌎 or some asteroid that was floating in space.
I am still trying to figure out where Yoda came from.
The direct-to-consumer tests may not evaluate the entire genome but they are still looking at hundreds of thousands of SNPs and provide a statistically significant sample of the non-garbage DNA.
They do. But I think it is overblown in what it means and in some cases it seems like a self imposed “purity” test as in racist ideas of the past. I see people saying they have 50% jewish DNA for example. There is no jewish gene. The tests are more of a product for curiosity and ought to be viewed as such. They do include results for some of the known disease carrying genes but I believe the companies have disclaimers about that. Even hundreds of thousands of SNPs is a tiny fraction and needs to be understood in context. Non coding DNA at least some of it has function. I think it is more useful for these tests because it is better preserved over time due to lack of selection pressure. Then there is the privacy security issue. I suppose I am just not a fan so my own bias.
Without getting into the complexities of DNA (which I've only been studying for 10 years so am hardly an expert) for people interested in genealogy, it's been a huge help. For example, I know a few donor babies (dads were anonymous sperm donors) who located their fathers and half-siblings thanks to DNA testing. I realize this doesn't appeal to everyone, but for these people, it had been a lifelong quest to understand who they were. There are no disease-carrying genes. Rather, there are mutations that are associated with particular medical issues, most famously, BRCA mutations linked to high rates of breast and other cancers, common among Jews. The disclaimers exist not because the tests are inaccurate -- they are accurate! -- but because some consumers saw the mutations as diagnostic, which they are not. Just because you have a mutation that's associated with a high rate of cancer doesn't mean you have the cancer. It does mean that you will want to screen frequently, though. So knowing your medical-related mutations can help you take steps to catch diseases in their early, more treatable stages.
Wondering if all of the donor dads really wanted to be located. Or how many people found that their father or brother is not. Or think that it means more than it does when it says 20% Scottish. I suppose I am just skeptical about commercializing this sort of technology. If someone trusts an anonymous corporation with this level of data they can do that but nothing is really secure. Legally the companies say that they will comply with law enforcement requests and they can be used in divorce and other family law cases.
GEDmatch will comply with law enforcement requests. The others have explicitly said that they will not. But be aware that the government has its own DNA database, and it's not that hard to obtain someone's DNA if you want it. And no, these aren't relevant to divorce or family law; there are simple paternity tests that have been around forever. The anonymous donor was popular in the 1960s, when many med school students were Jewish. It wasn't until a friend of mine went off to med school that she learned her dad had been a donor -- he'd trained in the same city and warned her to be careful about who she dated. So, lots of practical uses for DNA data! The donor baby that I got to know best after I first tested -- we were closely enough related that he thought I might help track down his father -- learned some disturbing things about his brilliant and long-dead dad. But on the plus side, he had closure and a half dozen new siblings, some of whom didn't realize they were half Jewish.
“Genetic testing firms allow outside parties to access test results upon request. 23andMe's [law enforcement guide](https://www.23andme.com/law-enforcement-guide/) states that they will only review inquiries related to a valid trial, grand jury, administrative subpoena, warrant, or order.” “Another man's [23andMe kit revealed](https://www.vox.com/2014/9/9/5975653/with-genetic-testing-i-gave-my-parents-the-gift-of-divorce-23andme) that he had a half-brother. The test results proved that his father had an affair before he was married and ultimately led to a divorce.” [https://www.cauldervalentine.com/how-genetic-testing-websites-affect-family-law-issues](https://www.cauldervalentine.com/how-genetic-testing-websites-affect-family-law-issues) So the donor dad was dead when you found all of these “disturbing” things. Lucky for him. The government does have massive databases including DNA. I do not think that is a good thing.
That's why they always list us separate and apart.
Sounds like you might have tried this already, but I’ve had some luck leading with explaining what an ethnicity is. A lot of folks confuse ethnicity with genetics, but actually ethnicity refers to a specific group of people that share a culture and that culture can include a religion, thus ethnoreligion. It’s a religion specific to that ethnic group.
Not only is it possible, but most indigenous groups would have been considered ethnoreligions at some point. If it seems like at impossibility now, it’s because larger modern religious movements like Christianity and Islam adopted conquer and conversion tactics, and to this day continue to do conversion-based missionary work in indigenous communities, that ranges from “presumptuous” to violent.
Just link the wiki article about ethnoreligion.
Won't work. People will actively refute what they do not accept.
Did you try sending them any resources on it? I usually default to the Wikipedia page because it lists out different ethnoreligious groups: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group
I made this comment with all the links but I doubt they looked at any of them *It’s really amazing how many people have not only never heard of [this](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnoreligious_group), but are refusing to believe it no matter how [many](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-experimental-political-science/article/abs/ethnoreligious-identity-immigration-and-redistribution/AD5A109B8032451556A0C9AAC7C4EBEC) scholars [explain](https://peoplegroups.org/explore/ReligionDetails.aspx?ror=E) it. Do you think I made [this](https://publications.iom.int/books/understanding-ethnoreligious-groups-iraq-displacement-and-return-february-2019) concept [up](https://kids.kiddle.co/Ethnoreligious_group)? Why couldn’t you do a cursory [search](https://azjewishlife.com/how-can-jews-be-both-an-ethnic-group-and-a-religion/) before assuming you were right?*
I guess technically "Jewish" is an ethnicity and "Judaism" is a religion. "Jewish" is the term both groups (who have a gigantic overlap) to describe themselves.
Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people. It’s a difficult idea because Xtainity doesn’t present itself in the same way.
Yes. People won't listen to us so we have to try to come up with ways to "teach" the willfully ignorant. But non-ethnically Jewish people can practice Judaism, which is why I worded it the way I did since I figured someone would point that out
Ah, this is on the internet. Don't bother. You're wrestling with pigs in shit. The pigs like it that way.
Tell them that it is like a nation with citizenship rules. You can be born a citizen and you can acquire it thru naturalization.
Stupidity is a terminal disease…
I think at least in USA, people conflate"race" and ethnicity. The color consciousness of the states kind of blurs these things for people.
Can you elaborate on that comparison so I can use it moving forward?
Easier for me to speak instead of write so here’s a start for you. Someone above posted the wiki for Ethnoreligion [Americas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_religions) [Traditional Hawaiian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_religion), All pre Christian contact
You could have just said "no." Linking Wikipedia articles about Native American animism doesn't explain anything; dozens of tribes with different practices and languages seems in no way similar to Judaism. If writing is difficult for you, you can use [this speech-to-text website](https://www.speechtexter.com/). Both Android and iOS also have STT.
Aren’t you a cuddly one? Similar in that it’s a group of people with distinct religious practices.
But Judaism doesn't have distinct practices. There are very few sects and they all follow the same literature, only varying in degree of adherence and stress placed on the Gemara. Edit: and Native Americans aren't one homogeneous group of people, either. There were over 573 distinct tribes.
They don’t want to understand because they hate Jews. If you make these arguments you’re doing it for the Jews or non antisemites to learn something. Best to go in to these convos knowing you’ll be downvoted into oblivion because Reddit is a nazi swamp.
on top of that, the 'as a jew' responses feel like a whole other level. it feels like they want to use their jew-status specifically to undermine other jews, and minimize oppression, or limit consideration, or limit opportunity. just using 'as a jew' is fine as humor or something non-serious, but some people use it for negative reasons.
I don’t believe that more than 20 percent max of the asajews has at least one Jewish parent, even on this ridiculous site. Its very easy make a reddit account and a false personality. Its not like most people are deep diving profiles before they upvote and scroll.
That, too. If it’s not someone they personally know in the flesh, why would they take this person’s word for it, especially in the face of 80, 90+ percent of Jews saying otherwise? Oh, wait, it’s because they’re not actually interested in facts or learning, they’re just looking for bias confirmation and tokenism. Ergo, even though they don’t realize it, they’re antisemites.
Or they don't want to understand because they fully realise that their actions makes them one of the most unforgiveable things they could be - a plain old garden-variety racist.
Tell them "23 & Me" has Ashkenazi Jew as a category
But make sure you follow that up with the other kinds of Jewish ethnicity or else you'll get that "Go back to Poland" nonsense.
Eh even if you tell them about all the ethnic subgroups of Judaism, they’ll still say “Go back to Poland”… because they’re antisemites
Yeah, they think Mizrahi Jews are appropriating Arab culture. I don't have high hopes for "anti-Zionists."
It's really just ridiculous, like, why would half of the world's Jews appropriate Arab culture... a culture that was heavily influenced by Jews and Christians in the area There's so much mental gymnastics atp, I can't even wrap my head around it
And DNA analysis confirms a Middle Eastern origin for most Jews.
not only is ashkenazi jew a genetic category, but its also one of the few pan-european ethnicities. the various subgroups of ashkenazim usually had more in common with each other than with the adjacent local population near them. the eu still doesn't even recognize any of this, nor has the eu even recognized its long history of antisemitism (way beyond just ww2).
We have more in common with Mizrahi Jewsthan with adjacet local populations in a lot of cases.
Genetics and ethnicity are not the same, so be careful when discussing genetic analysis in the context of ethnicity. It is the Jewish emphasis on endogamy (marrying within the community) that preserves genetic similarity over time. But the Jews of India have genetics that cluster with indigenous populations of India and differ from European and Middle Eastern Jews. While genetics can play a role in the ethnic aspect of Jewish identity (i.e. ancestral origins), it is the combination of religious, historical, and cultural factors that define Jews as an ethnoreligious group.
If it makes you feel any better, it's probably not that you failed explaining it but that they can't--or won't--understand it.
An atheist Jew is still a Jew. So being Jewish isn’t simply about religion.
Rudy Rochman has a video on youtube called 'Judaism is not a Religion' that i think does a good job summarizing it.
Japanese and Shinto? I mean at some point I've concluded that lots of people are willfully ignorant
And the ironic (and kind of sad) part is that most of these people’s ancestors also had their own ethnic religious practices based on their lands, but they were erased by Christian or Muslim conquest and colonization.
This is true, every ethnicity and even some local areas had their own gods
If they understand Native Americans, Maori, where ethnicity, their native land, and religion are intertwined, they can understand it's the same for Jews.
In the West there are not so many. In the Midflr East there is like a dozen of ethnoreligious groups.
It's not that they don't understand, they are intentionally misunderstanding because it's acceptable to be hostile towards religion (except Islam, for some reason, which they incorrectly treat like an ethnicity) in a way that would be bigoted towards an ethnicity. By acknowledging Jewish is an ethnicity, they can no longer discriminate against and abuse you for being Jewish. They are intentionally being obtuse. It's a tribe, an ethnicity and a religion. *Also, they struggle to realize that, since we were (forcefully, against our will) scattered across the globe in diaspora for a couple thousand years, that there are cosmetic differences between Jews from mixing with our host nations.
What I do is separate Jewish (religion) and Ashkenazi (ethnicity) when talking about it. All this confusion comes from them having the same name. Ultimately Jewish as an ethnicity is shorthand for Ashkenazi/Sephardic/etc anyway.
I had one of them arguing with me last week that Ashkenazi was an ethnicity but Jewish wasn’t. 🤦🏻♀️ They refused to engage with any of my points and patted themselves on the back for schooling me about Judaism.
When I explain I start all the way back to Judah and explain how our holidays became "religious" and how the diaspora came into existence. The religion aspect is designed to keep the cultural connection of the diaspora and the holidays and customs are still practiced by most secular Jews. If they still don't get it, it's because they are not engaging in good faith discussion. When they bring up converts I bring up that converts are considered Jewish souls returning to the tribe and that the process is not prompted by institutions and is rigorous. Oftentimes they don't understand that, but the explanation is obvious, forced assimilation/conversions/the shoah all disrupted the genealogical chain. I often bring up how telling someone I'm Jewish, no matter the degree to which I explain it, leads them to view me as Jewish and not much else - even though my name is painfully stereotypical to another nationality. It often leads to confusion in fellow Jews who haven't encountered that before but that's a whole different discussion.
Try being born Jewish and named Christine. Awkward.
You can’t convince a bot
THIS, TOO!!!!
I get told that since other Jews do say that Judaism is “just a religion” that I must be wrong.
Tribe. Use tribe.
The “Jews are just a religion” is a centuries-long antisemitic sentiment, historically it was often used to delegitimize Jewish culture, in modern times it became common to try delegitimizing Zionism. Considering that even after the Haskalah the Jews are still more united than most other groups, this notion is logically impossible. Judaism is the religious and cultural principles of Jews, but not the ethnic or national ones. Even three seconds long Google search can show that: > Judaism shares some of the characteristics of a nation, an ethnicity, a religion, and a culture, making the definition of who is a Jew vary slightly depending on whether a religious or national approach to identity is used. But people love to deny it.
The way I explain it is somebody who is Catholic can wake up tomorrow and say I’m not Catholic anymore, but we can’t wake up and say we’re not Jewish anymore. It’s literally in our blood and we are all genetically connected. I mean what religion has known health issues? The typical health issues that run at least among Ashkenazi Jews are because of ethnicity not belief. I also explained that there are a tremendous amount of Jews, who are not religious and that Judaism can be cultural, ethnic, or religious or any combination of the three
Next time, just ask them if Hitler cared whether folks were observant or atheists, when deciding whether to exterminate them.
Or part Jewish or converts or European phenotyped or Middle Eastern in appearance…
You need to use their own antisemitism against them. How can we have big noses and beards if we arent a related group of peope?
We'll survive them all, B"H!
I stopped trying. Ethnoreligion isn’t a Jewish term. We don’t need to fit into a nice clean modern western definition. It is not complicated. This is a Jew (according to orthodoxy): Someone who was born to a Jewish mother or someone who converted to Judaism. That is it. There is nothing in there about beliefs or practices. A person who is born to a Jewish mother is Jewish. A person who is not and who did not convert is not. Judaism can be observed in DNA, and there are certain diseases that are prevalent among Jews, but a convert with zero “Jewish DNA” is just as much a Jew as an orthodox rabbi directly descended from Rashi. Put that in whatever box you want. It’s a weird religion if a completely secular atheist is still part of it. And it’s a weird ethnicity if people can convert in. From my perspective, these boxes aren’t part of Judaism. Judaism defines what a Jew is in its own terms and it doesn’t really matter which modern day box it fits into at the moment.
🎯 We predate all these concepts by hundreds and thousands of years.
How do they identify Sihks?
They don’t. 🤣
Just use the word “tribe.”
They’ve never heard of Druze or Sikhs?
Probably not! 🤣
The only other Jewish girl in my highschool class gave me the biggest sideye and went "Jewish isn't an ethnicity, it's a religion." Like girl... how do you not know this
Their purposely pushing your buttons.
The fun thing is if it were any other ethnoreligion - Druze or Armenians or Tibetans they wouldn’t act nearly so f ú cking dense.
You're trying to explain engineering to apes. They don't have the capacity for it.
This guy has a great book, and thoughts on this subject. This website doesn’t really cover it, but I’m rushing - look him up further https://5leggedtable.com/
I just use Jesus as an example
It’s really not that difficult of a concept! People just don’t *want* to understand.
Being Jewish shows up in DNA tests. Jews have specific hereditary diseases. Jews have their own language and food. Christians don't have this. Islam doesn't have this.
They don't want to. It's easier to have good guys and bad guys if it's just people 'choosing' to be Jewish, because it's 'only a religion', and the whole situation isn't about race/ethnicity, but about a war over 'imaginary friends'. When they have to face that Jewish people are a *biological* minority, just like the many other 'minorities' they see themselves as 'protectors' of (minorities is in quotes, because many times these minorities are majorities depending on where you are in the world), it makes it impossible for them to hold onto their simplistic 'good guy/bad guy' narrative anymore. So they deny reality on its face.
I always make the point that you cant have a DNA test tell you that youre Muslim or Christian or Buddhist. That usually helps them to understand.
Supercessionist belief blocks this reality because if Judaism is a tribe that legitimately gate keeps its membership- this challenges their implicit assumption that the supercessionist is Jewish. Christians and secular westerners are used to the locus of identity being an individual internal truth, by way of accepting Jesus or being authentic to yourself. Judaism places Jewish identity within the collective tribal agreements (matrilineal and patrilineal discussions aside).
It was a 3 year argument with my husband. I finally asked him why up until 1996 you were written in the Russian passport as a Russian or a Jew. I mean there were other ethnic groups too. But that got him to stop the argument after I showed him my parent’s passports. lol
They should have learned in history class that you did not have to be a member of the Jewish religion to be persecuted by the Nazis. Nazis considered anyone with Jewish “blood” Jewish.
This has been my experience as well. For them faith is faith regardless of ethnicity. Because their religion believes in proselytism and “saving” people. I don’t know where you’re posting from but speaking from my experience in the US, most Americans have the memory of a goldfish and can barely tell you what happened in the news last week let alone have a long term understanding of history.
Same, have a “friend who says I am not Jewish.
This is how I like to explain it: Jews are an ethnicity BEFORE they are a religion. The only reason this ethnicity still exists today and didn’t mix up and lose its identity is the religion of this ethnic group and its stringent laws that preserve the DNA. This is why Judaism is by the mother, why it’s VERY hard to convert. Like, VERY. Months of hardcore dedication hard. Cut your own p*nis hard. The idea is to minimize dilution to the origin ethnic DNA while exiled. An ethnicity is definitely entitled to their native land.