Do you mean cultural Jews? Because yes, there are cultural Jews, just like there are cultural Catholics, cultural Muslims, cultural Hindus... where people retain some aspect of religious enculturation but are not practicing or don't believe in it. But there are Asian Jews, Black Jews, White Jews, convert Jews. How are they "ethnic" Jews, too? |
No- we are all still waiting and we will be waiting forever, because there is no coherent explanation. |
Peace with Palestinians will not happen until Jews love their children more than they love Palestinian land. |
It is hard if you are applying chattel-slavery definitions of race to an ancient ethno-religious people. You would have to look to older civilalization examples, Armenia is a good example. Armenians are native to historic Armenia which was settler-colonialized througout its history by Arabs, Turks, Europeans, etc.. Modern day Armenia is a sliver of historic Armenia - there's a large educated Armenian disapora throughout the world. Most Armenians are Apostolic Christians - and that's the state religion of modern-day Armenia. But you can marry into the Church, and the Armenians in exile intermarried with other Orthodox Christians. Because Judea was settler-colonialized, there is a large Jewish disapora around the world, but modern-day Israel is the homeland of Jews, like Armenia is the homeland of Armenians, or Kurdistan is the homeland of Kurds, or Italy is the homeland of Italians for that matter. The Jewish diaspora, the Armenian diasporia, the Chaldean diaspora, the Assyrian diaspora, etc. are all ethno-religious peoples orginating in the Levant (or straddling the Levant). |
That doesn't answer anything. Jews exist in many ethnicities. Certainly not all (many? most these days?) Jews do not have any direct genetical lineages to the levant in any remotely recent history. And a lot of ethnicities are more similar than they are distinct. None of which gives them a right to return to an ancient "homeland" from thousands of years ago, and I belong to one of the categories you mentioned. |
Agreed. And many of us hate Trump but are American. We would not want people from other countries to equate us with Trump’s policies or attitudes. Similarly I am Indian and Hindu and do not like Modi. I also do not like Usha Vance! I love Mamdani! |
Actually, most Jews have DNA markers tracing back to the Levant - so yes, they do have "direct genetical" lineage to the Levant. Jews are a tribe, and, of course, blood quantum is a colonial construct set up to uphold white supremacy and strip indigenous communties of rights. Moreover, the majority of Israeli Jews are of Mizrachi origin. If Israel does not have the right to exist, than neither do Lebananon or Palestine for that matter, since both have sizable European and non-Arab admixture. Or Jordan or Syria - or India or any country really established in the late 80+ years, because these are boundaries set up after colonialism, but of course, that's not a standard that is applied anywhere else, there have been global shakeups after world wars or couuntries that split apart or form together. By the same token, if Jews are indigenous, so are Palestinians by this point. If Jews deserve self-determination - so do Palestinians. |
There's a massive difference between Jews living on the land, because they have actual familial connection (ditto for Palestinians). And returning because of some "right of return" from a long long long time ago, with no actual traceable lineage. And I thought Israel doesn't use genetic tests for right of return? Or a hell of a lot of non-Jewish people with Jewish blood would be allowed to "return." |
Are you saying we should revert the entire world to back to what it was thousands of years ago? Because of "self determination?"Because that is completely insane. For Jews and Israel, and for anyone and a "homeland" that they have no direct family connection to. |
The Palestinian Authority allows for "right of return" for Palestinians whose ancestors lived on the land during Ottoman times and left long before the state of Israel was established, including those who immigrated to Ottoman controlled areas from Europe -as part of the Turkish resettlement strategy. For example, the woman ( Inea Bushnaq) interviewed by Mamdani as part of Nakba Day, is a registered as a Palestinian refugee, even though her Serbian and Bosnian ancestors moved to modern-day Israel as part of Turkey's attempt to encourage European immigration in the 1880s, though her relatives were not expelled from Israel with the founding of the State, her relatives still live in the same villages within Israel (https://www.palestine-studies.org/sites/default/files/attachments/jps-articles/JPS177_06_Li_Seferovich.pdf) - her grandfather (a local doctor) stayed, later sold his land to Jews, and moved to England. I do think that centering yourself in the lived experiences of Jews is racism. I have family members who returned to Israel in the 1880s from Yemen because it was permissable to kidnap and rape Jewish children, Jews could not own property, Jews were routinely subjected murder/rape/etc. - and I have relatives who were kicked out of Lebanon after the establishment of the State of Israel. Judaism is a land-based religion and returning to the land has always been part of it - which not at all unusual for other ancient peoples in the Levant (or elsewhere). If you really dig into who is indigenous and and who is a refugee, these are very murky questions. 300,000 Arabs moved into Mandate Palestine because that's where the jobs were. How are you going to parse out who is legitimate in the eyes of privileged Western elites or elsewhere. Where do you expect the 900,000+ Jewish refugee familes from the Levant who were absorbed by Israel to go? Hint: they are not going back to Yemen. |
NP. No - they are not called “cultural Jews” - they’re just Jewish. You don’t need to go to temple to be Jewish. If you are Hindu, you don’t need to go to temple to be Hindu. You just ARE. Judaism passes on your mother’s side. Even if you don’t practice, you are Jewish. |
There are absolutely no obvious outward physical signs that someone is jewish. It’s a group of people, and/or a religion, labeled as ‘jews’. People living in fear of being jewish can look and act like anyone else, they are usually white people in the US. As far as defining who qualifies as a jew, it’s nebulous and not precise. If one can be jewish from the mother only, that would objectively make them half jewish if the father isn’t jewish. If one coverts to Judaism, then anyone is a jew or anyone can become a jew. |
But Hindus, by far, are not white people. They are a different race. Caucasian Eastern European American jews today may consider themselves to be their own unique race but they are objectively white people and live as white people. There are no outward physical signs that someone is a jew. If one is suffering or living in fear of discrimination or hatred because he or she is jewish it is not because of their outward physical appearance as opposed to Hindus who are easily identifiable. |
So converts can never actually be Jewish? People who had a Jewish dad can never be Jewish? Hinduism isn't an ethnicity. It's a religion, also a culture. It's something you can be born into, but it's not genetic. |
This. So black Jews or Asian Jews or convert Jews aren't actually Jews? Wow, that's offensive. |