A few lawsuits might create truly civil discussion, instead of the anti-Jewish hatefests that go on.

Kav: You’re welcome.

An American woman of Italian descent is a Catholic. She considers herself Italian (the American part is understood, let’s drop it). She converts to Hinduism.

She is still Italian. That is still her cultural heritage. She cannot change her parents or her ancestors.

An American Jew was raised Jewish, but later decides she is going to become a Hindu. She is no longer religiously a Jew, but she is still Jewish.

The problem, Kav, is that we need two words where we use only one. If Jews were known as Hebrews, and our religion were called Judaism, then we would be able to say that anti-Hebrewism is ethnic hate, and anti-Judaism is religious hate. But we use one word, because Judaism is both the people and the religion.

You can never convert from being born Jewish, just as you can never convert from being born Italian. It’s who you are. However, you can change your religion.

One of my best friends is a Jewish atheist (who knows more about Judaism than I do). She utterly self-identifies as Jewish.

I guess it’s a Jewish thing, because I find it very easy to absorb.

One who was born Jewish but never followed the Jewish religion does not need to “convert” in order to follow the Jewish religion — even if he or she followed another religion her entire life. E.g. a friend of mine was hidden by her parents from the Nazis with a Christian family while she was not much more than an infant. She was raised as a Christian and did not learn until she was in her 20s that she was Jewish. When she decided to rejoin the Jewish people and follow the Jewish religion, she did not have to undergo any type of conversion; having been born to a Jewish mother, she had always been a Jew.

Conversely, if someone was not born Jewish, they cannot adopt the Jewish religion without simultaneoulsy adopting the Jewish people. The conversion entails both. Thereafter they are considered the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just like any other Jew. The Talmud tells of many prominent Jewish religious leaders who were descended from converts, and whose anscestors a few short generations before the conversion tried to wipe out the Jewish people.

Now do you get it?

“Jewish” covers both Judaism and Jewishness. That is the dichotomy that we accept, and are forever explaining to non-Jews.

You can be an atheist and still be a Jew

Is it the abscence of another religion that keeps one a Jew in that circumstance or do you think that you can be a Hindu and a Jew? I assume that it is the former.