"But due to their relevitly small numbers, a lot of Jews are born in the religon, as opposed to converting into it. Therefore, they're often treated as a race." - chihuahua
There's a difference between "born AS something" and "born INTO something" and it's a false equivalence to conflate the two. False equivalences should be confronted.
There's a sufficient degree of genetic uniformity among all these races that calling them a single race isn't too outlandish, though.
You can't even write racist abuse in excrement on somebody's car without the politically correct brigade jumping down your throat!Large noses, dark brown hair usually wavy or curly, and uh the dudes have a certain pattern of beard growth akin to that of the Amish.
I don't know, I've basically had the same thought you've had for the longest time, Cider. It's just that when I brought it up a lot of people seemed to be proving me wrong. I'm still not sure at this point.
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Diagonalizing The Matrix
As someone close to the issue I can tell you that predictably enough, the Jews themselves can't agree on what being a Jew means.
The origin of Judaism is a religion. That much is certain. However, As You Know, it is a very old religion and has actively discouraged interfaith marriage throughout history. As a result, studies have been able to find Jewish genetic "tells" common to many Jews all over the world. There is no "Jew gene", but in most cases you can certainly get a decent idea of a person's "Jewishness" from looking at their DNA.
Even given this, up until recent history Judaism really did its best to consider itself a religion and nothing more. Jews in France would define themselves "Frenchmen professing the religion of moses", and German Jews thought of themselves as Germans first and foremost. But then came along a very influential man who vehemently disagreed with this view of Judaism and insisted that Jews were, indeed, a race: Adolf Hitler.
Nazi Germany, and by proxy nearly all of Europe at one point, did not care whether you lighted candles in the Sabbath or whether you were content to munch on cheeseburgers. No one asked you whether you wanted to be a Jew; you were a Jew because your grandparents were, even if you've never read a word of the Torah in your life. On these grounds you were most likely fired from your job, had your property confiscated and eventually got sent to Auschwitz to burn, even if you were a soldier who fought for Germany in World War I.
Now, this is the kind of thing that defines a people, whether they want to or not. Faced with the horrors of the holocaust, many Jewish people abandoned God for having allowed this to happen and became what today you would call secular Jews. If Judaism were a religion and nothing more, that would be a contradiction in terms; but a hefty 42% of Israelis, for instance, define themselves as such.
This has caused a great divide in modern Israeli Jewry, with Orthodox Jews going "You don't observe the Sabbath and don't go to the synagogue, what kind of Jews are you?", and Secular Jews going "Sorry, we're too busy figuring out how to prevent a second holocaust courtesy the Muslim conglomerate 600 times the size of our land mass surrounding us, since your almighty God is demonstrably not up to the task".
As a result, no one can agree on the simple question of whether Judaism is still a religion, or now a race, or has become a nationality. The Israeli judicial system, which at one point was challenged to give a formal definition, essentially threw its hands up and said, "I don't know, you figure it out".
More reading: Wikipedia - Who is a Jew?
edited 23rd May '11 7:59:43 AM by TripleElation
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Diagonalizing The Matrix
What would the solution be to the problem then? Removing the tropes about Jews from the Race Tropes index and putting them in another index?
I was talking with a friend about the problem and his response was: "The Jews can't even agree on that. The only people who know for sure what defines a Jew are anti-Semites. They don't have any problems what so ever."
I'm backing Hezekiah Graber.
And I once read that the separation of race (or rather, people, as in "French people") and religion doesn't apply to the Jews because of cultural differences, which can be pretty confusing for western people for whom it's natural that being American/German/whatever is one thing and being Catholic/Protestant/Atheist/whatever is another one. I also heard: If a non-Jew converts to Judaism, he also becomes a member of the Jewish people. Cultural difference, as I said. And to further complicate things, because of the western influence on the Jews which became stronger since the start of enlightenment, it wasn't uncommon anymore that Jews considered themselves as e.g. Brits in the first place, the western way. Which was reversed then because of Those Wacky Nazis. And then, Israel was founded, so there was a Jewish state again. Thoroughly confused?
Fuhrmann, es kostet dir noch dein LebenWhere tropes involving Jews go depends on what the trope is about. The aforementioned All Jews Are Ashkenazi trope is a Race Trope since it has to do with Jews being portrayed as belonging to a certain race. A trope such as Golem doesn't fit under a Race Trope since it doesn't have to do with the stereotypes.
The tropes under Race Tropes involving Jews should involve the bunching up of members of the religion (such as myself) as people who have peiyas and wear kippot everywhere.
edited 25th May '11 1:08:18 PM by VmKid
"Race" is a social construct. The pseudo-biological support for the construct of race does not hold up.
Consider: two people from the same "race" will likely have a greater amount of genetic difference than two people of "different" races.
I think that's actually my statement for the thread itself. But, yeah, basically, there's no real "genetic uniformity" for a race.
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One thing that bugs me is the attitude toward Jews. True, its hard to get anyone to agree on how many different races of people are in the world, but the belief that Jews are a separate race of people has been discredited since Rome took over the Mediterranean. There are names for the various Jews of different races if you have any doubt of this fact.
Just got done clearing out Token White examples where people who were clearly white where discounted for being "Jewish". Why do people do this? Even if you don't know someone's genetics the phenotypes are plain to anyone with working eyes.
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