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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm asking because I grew up in an area where I wasn't around a lot of Jewish people, I don't meant this to be snarky, offensive or ignorant, although I'm sure it'll be taken thay way. Here goes:

Is Jewish a race or religion?
Are you considered white, as in do you check that box for demographics?
Explain to be Jewish jokes, as in what is the generalization behind them. I really don't get them, although I can draw inferences. 
Where did the term anti-Semite come from?

And anything else I should know would be appreciated too. [/quote]

Noticed that while your first question got answered, the others didn't.

"Semite" refers to this (from Wikipedia)
In linguistics and ethnology, Semitic (from the Biblical "Shem", Hebrew: ???, translated as "name", Arabic: ??????) was first used to refer to a language family of West Asian origin, now called the Semitic languages. This family includes the ancient and modern forms of Ahlamu, Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian), Amharic, Amorite, Arabic, Aramaic/Syriac, Canaanite/Phoenician/Carthaginian, Chaldean, Eblaite, Edomite, Ge'ez, Hebrew, Maltese, Mandaic, Moabite, Sutean, Tigre and Tigrinya, and Ugaritic, among others.

Over time, the phrase antisemitism came to specifically refer to hatred of Jewish people.

As others have suggested, some of the genetic components are related to people of a specific region (i.e. Eastern Europe) who happened to also follow the same religion.

The Ashkenazim Jews are usually what Americans think of when they are referring to Jews, but that is due to the fact that at the turn of the century, many Eastern European Jews immigrated to America.  As others have mentioned, the Jewish religion spread just as other religions spread, and as a result their are many different ethnic groups that include Jewish members.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Judaism was considered a religion, not a race. With the breakdown of the Roman Empire, the Church became the dominant political force on the continent. Jews were regarded as a threat by the Church because they were essentially rebelling against their rule. If a Jew converted, they were accepted into the Christian community, and were no longer subject to persecution. So while antisemitism existed, it was based on religion, not a concept of "race".

In the 20th century, the Nazis promoted the idea of "Aryan" as the superior race, and Jewish as not only inferior, but a dangerous race. In Nazi ideology, your religious practice had no real bearing. German Jews who had converted or were not regularly practicing Jews could be considered Jewish under Nazi racial laws.[/quote]

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