Reply to Is the refernece "he/she looks very Jewish" benign or an insult?

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[quote=Anonymous]"Eastern Europeans maybe. Europe's a huge place. No, most Ashkenazi Jews don't look like the French or Irish. Russians and Poles, maybe."

Right, and that's because historically, lots of Ashkenazi Jews lived in Russia and Poland (until we were killed or expelled during the pogroms and the Holocaust).

Why are people so vehemently against the notion that Ashkenazi Jews are a distinct group, different from Slavs, Poles, etc.? In Russia, until the late 90s, you would specify your ethnicity on your passport. "Russian" was different from "Jewish." It's the difference between your civic and ethnic identity. I know this is a weird concept for many Americans to grasp, but please try to understand.

Maybe this will help (from Wikipedia):

In an ethnic sense, an Ashkenazi Jew is one whose ancestry can be traced to the Jews who settled in Central Europe. For roughly a thousand years, the Ashkenazim were a reproductively isolated population in Europe, despite living in many countries, with little inflow or outflow from migration, conversion, or intermarriage with other groups, including other Jews. Human geneticists have argued that genetic variations have been identified that show high frequencies among Ashkenazi Jews, but not in the general European population, be they for patrilineal markers (Y-chromosome haplotypes) and for matrilineal markers (mitotypes).[115] Since the middle of the 20th century, many Ashkenazi Jews have intermarried, both with members of other Jewish communities and with people of other nations and faiths.[116]

A 2006 study found Ashkenazi Jews to be a clear, homogeneous genetic subgroup. Strikingly, regardless of the place of origin, Ashkenazi Jews can be grouped in the same genetic cohort – that is, regardless of whether an Ashkenazi Jew's ancestors came from Poland, Russia, Hungary, Lithuania, or any other place with a historical Jewish population, they belong to the same ethnic group. The research demonstrates the endogamy of the Jewish population in Europe and lends further credence to the idea of Ashkenazi Jews as an ethnic group. Moreover, though intermarriage among Jews of Ashkenazi descent has become increasingly common, many Haredi Jews, particularly members of Hasidic or Hareidi sects, continue to marry exclusively fellow Ashkenazi Jews. This trend keeps Ashkenazi genes prevalent and also helps researchers further study the genes of Ashkenazi Jews with relative ease. 
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