Jews: A religious group, people or race?

[rug]

Last edited Sat Aug 25, 2012, 11:38 PM - Edit history (1)

Prof. Harry Ostrer has published a new book that explores the genetic and environmental basis of the Jewish people.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
08/26/2012 02:37

As Diaspora Jews increasingly assimilate and intermarry with gentiles, and their Israeli counterparts marry Jews whose forebears came from the four corners of the earth, a window of opportunity to study Jewish genetics is gradually closing.

In another generation or two, it may be possible only to know whether one bears a “Jewish genome” rather than identify the different genetic threads that once bound them together.

http://www.jpost.com/Sci-Tech/Article.aspx?id=282584

Cross-post from the Religion Group. The headline is from the newspaper.

[meti57b]

1. Jews are a "tribe".

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Good question, and one which has been bounced around in my household repeatedly.

Personally, i have a mixed genetic background, i have highly assimilated jews in my family tree who also only marginally self identified, often for professional reasons.. From a philosophical standpoint I am an open minded Atheist who subscribes to elements of Eastern philosophies as well...

But Hitler would have called me a "Jew", for sure.

[Meshuga]

3. We are a people. Not a race.

A person can become Jewish by joining the Jewish people. In Jewish law, the person is Jewish if born of a Jewish mother (well, Reform Judaism accepts either parent) not because of "Jewish genome."

The idea that "Jewish" is a race was conceived in Germany by Jew haters.

But the Jewish people is a multiracial people that includes Eastern European Jews, Arab Jews, Chinese Jews, Indian Jews, Beta Israel, Jews from the Iberian Peninsula, Latin American Jews, etc.