You’re being more obtuse than a geometry test.
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Why are you so upset over there not being a perfectly sharp definition of a jew? There have been given some perfectly fine definitions, but they all agree that there is no fine line between a jew and a non-jew.
Try giving me the definition of black people or white people for that matter. You won’t be able to accurately define them without edge cases despite knowing perfectly well what you mean when you use these words.
Despite ethnicity not being a sharp line, it does exist. It’s just more fluid than you can comprehend.
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Because it creates all kinds of problems in the world. That’s why. WWII would not have occurred if Nazi Germany didn’t hate Jews because they wouldn’t have been able to get the support. Not to mention the Israel-Palestine conflict, all the massacres that have occurred throughout time dealing with Jews and all the other problems we have Antisemitism.
Whenever there’s a group of people (Group A) who want something and willing to take it by force. They label another group (Group B) Jew and that gives Group A the right to love/hate Group B for whatever reason.
That’s why it pisses me off and apparently nobody cares.
hahaha. What if you don’t know who your mother is? Of course the only way you know who your mother is because she tells you… Nice for mom isn’t it? What if she’s a lying ass bitch and kidnapped your ass?
What if she’s sworn to secrecy and gives you a little medal and you gotta travel to other planets meet a hot chick whos engaged to a moron she doesn’t like, but if your medal names you Jew/nonJew then you can marry her. You know like in Spaceballs. 
I’d just like a better definition being Jewish before I go off to war or deal with a lot of problems and pain and misery because someone Jewish is involved.
Don’t you?
That is nonsence, Hitler came to power not because of his antisemitisem. Hitler started war against Poland not because of Jews, but because of simple expansionism. Nobody needs a definition of who is Jewish unless he is jewish or an antisemite. If you want some definitions, look into jewish opinions.
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In the real world we live in, rather than the weirdness of Nazi Germany, being a Jew is easily self-defined. People are aware of their own descent, and quite happily define themselves as Jewish. Quite possibly Jewish atheist, but that’s their prerogative.
Ethnicity is a bugger. I define myself as Irish, but my grandmothers defined themselves as Scots (despite her family having lived in Ireland for many generations) and English (despite her grandfather having been the first of his family to leave poverty in Galway and join the British Army).
None of the interminable argument above is worth a hill of beans.
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And the American version of Nazi Germany.
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No doubt Americans had a poor understanding of Nazi Germany before WW2 but to be fair German’s didn’t seem to have a good understanding of America either. People tend to get wrapped up in their lives until the outside world bites them in the ass.
I would think Americans today on the whole still don’t understand Nazi Germany. The way they call everyone Nazi’s and compare leaders to Hitler without a clue as to what they are saying. I think it’s sad. People probably know more about Hitler from YouTube memes than the truth.
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This is so incorrect as to be laughable. There are so many recent wars in which the Jewish issue plays absolutely no issue. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, gulf war 1 and 2. And those are just American conflicts in the last 50 years.
There are many kinds of hate in the world. Ask Armenians about their history. Hell ask an American Indian. The holocaust isn’t even The biggest mass killing (I think the cultural revolution in China killed almost 20 million). This is just the latest in Jewish purges in Europe over 2,000 years. But it is special for many reasons. Many many if you ask Sparty.
And to say the people in this forum don’t care is incredibly offensive. You don’t know us and what we care about. I have never seen someone here attack anything even remotely Jewish. I have shed more tears and been at my most angry as I learn about the holocaust. Until you know us here to say we don’t care is just utterly wrong. I see a number of people giving you good definitions and trying to address your points in a civil manner. Please give them the courtesy of equal treatment.
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Well it doesn’t look like we’re going to find a better definition of what it means to be Jewish here… This is becoming toxic conversation. I will not be responding anymore.
OP please lock thread.
You made it toxic.
Also, it seems like you’re unwilling to accept that ww2 was started for a bad cause and it feels almost as if it’s not the Jewish lives that you care for, but all the other lives that were lost in defending their right to be Jewish (although that wasn’t what they themselves believed to be fighting for).
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You have serious tunnel vision about antisemitism. Yes, most wars have been fought because country A wants something from country B and uses flimsy, superficial justifications to rile up their populace. It’s called tribalism: if you’re not one of “us” you’re inferior and bad and deserve to get your butt kicked! It can involve literal tribes or religions (Catholics vs Protestants, Muslims vs Hindus) or race (black vs white).
For example, the Spanish Reconquista attacked the Jews, but only after expelling the Muslims. The Spanish wanted Spain to be entirely Catholic.
Let’s suppose someone is adopted, but doesn’t know it. If their adopted parents are Jewish then the adoptee going to be a religious Jew. Even if they find out later they’re not ethnically Jewish, they may continue to identify as Jewish because that is how they have been raised.
My last name is German; so is my mother’s maiden name. I’m also blonde-haired and blue-eyed. So obviously my heritage is German-American? But surprise: my DNA test showed I’m only 5% German. 75% of my ancestry is from the British Isles (English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish). And I’m also 1% African, presumably a 4xgreat-grandmother.
In the USA, there are very few blacks who are of 100% African descent and there are many whites who are less than 100% European. In nearly all cases, if both of their parents look black and they look black then they will identify as black, and vice versa. There are instances of people who were half-black who could pass as white who did so.
The Nazi Nuremberg Laws legally defined someone who was 1/8 Jewish and 7/8 German as being legally German. For reference, Native American tribes get to define their own membership and most require someone to be at least 1/8 of that tribe to be eligible for membership. The German definitions of “Jewish” aren’t unreasonable; it was the associated restrictions on Jews that were antisemitic.
Unless you live in Israel or one of its neighboring countries you don’t have to worry about that. There have been many instances of ethnic cleansing (pograms, etc) against Jews throughout history, but excepting wars involving Israel as a belligerent that leaves only the Nazis as waging war because of the Jews.
It should also be remembered that while the Nazis, as a political party, were obsessively antisemitic, a big part in the Nazis achieving power was Hitler’s personal charisma. Additionally, the Nazis goals of Making Germany Great Again appealed to many Germans who weren’t antisemitic (or at least not in favor of genocide). If there had been a traditional conservative leader in 1920s-1930s Germany with Hitler’s charisma that leader would have ended up in power, rearmed Germany, and waged an expansionist war in the 1940s in the name of a Third Reich - just without the genocide.
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No, the Moors had rights,
the Jews did not:
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I don’t know if anyone else on this thread is Jewish, but I’ll try to give you an explanation. I will also chalk up any offensive comments to ignorance and not belligerence. The Jewish Diaspora came into being primarily after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple under Titus and the defeat of the Bar Kokhba rebellion in the Second Century CE. Prior to that, most Jews lived in the kingdoms of Israel and Judea & Samaria. Most of what we know comes from the writings of Josephus, a Roman Jew who may have witnessed these events. After this defeat, most (but not all Jews) fled to the four corners of the world. Some Jews were able to stay behind in what came to be known as Palestine. A large number fled to Europe and came to be known as Ashkenazi. They developed the Yiddish language, which is most closely related to German. Another group went to Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey and the Maghrib. They came to be known as Sephardim, and they spoke a language called Ladino, that is similar to Spanish. Other Jews went to the land that came to be the Arab Countries. These are the Mizrahi Jews who speak various dialects of Arabid. There were also Jews who went to Iran and Bukhara (the modern states of Tajikistan, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kirghizstan). There were even Jewish communities that developed in China, India, and Africa (mostly Ethiopia and Ghana). While many intermarried with local populations, they continued to be Jews as long as the mothers were Jewish and the children were raised in the Jewish faith. Judaism is passed matrilineally, which makes sense since motherhood is an issue of fact and fatherhood is an issue of opinion.
No matter where the Jews fled, and no matter what customs and foods they adopted, they maintained the same rules of Kashrut (Kosher foods), read the same Torah (including the Talmud and commentaries), observed the same holidays, and prayed the same way. So, no matter where a Jew is from in the world, he or she can attend a service as long as they can read Hebrew. The pronunciations may differ (as it does in other languages like English, French, Spanish, German, etc), but the meanings are still the same.
After a long introduction, here is your answer: a Jew is anyone whose mother was born Jewish or had a legitimate conversion. There is no requirement to practice the faith, although most Jews do observe some of the holidays. There is a continuum of observance from unaffiliated to Reform (most of the service is in the native tongue of the nation where the Jews live) to Reconstructionist to Conservative to Orthodox. Within the Orthodoxy there are also Hassidic Jews, which is a sect from Eastern Europe who trace their formation to the Baal Shem Tov, a Jewish mystic who lived in the 18th century Ukraine. As for Hitler’s definition, it is useful in the sense of understanding that his hatred of the Jews had nothing to do with their observance of the faith, political views, self identification, loyalty to the state, or any other personal factors. If a person had one single Jewish grandparent, he or she would be facing disenfranchisement, internment, slavery, torture and ultimately death inside the Reich. This is what happened to my Mom’s two uncles, three aunts, and numerous cousins who were living in Warsaw when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939., This is why Israel has a right of return for anyone who can prove that they are Jewish. Israel is the only place that provides an open safe harbor to Jewish refugees, including Falashas (Ethiopian Jews) who were saved in Operation Moses in the 1980s and now live as full Israeli citizens.
I hope this was helpful. I also hope that everyone on this thread has a happy and healthy New Year. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly. Shalom.
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You folks realize that this is at the top of our questions, just while google is trying to do embarassing damage control with their recent search results when we type in Jew in google!
No strange results when searching from Germany (Jew and Jude), all results not nonsence.
To debate the topic within a topic, some Americans actually did see Nazi Germany for the legitimate threat it was to the world. That includes a lot of Jewish Americans who tried to raise awareness during the 30’s. Our very own Ambassador to Germany in the 1930’s saw quickly into his tenure the growing threat the Nazis were becoming. I’m discovering as I read more and more about the war and the 1930’s there was more awareness and understanding of the threat posed by Nazi Germany than I previously thought.
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