Anonymous #fundie

Anonymous #fundie aish.com

Ridiculous reform

Sadly and tragically, reform and other movements think its fine to re create the laws, calling a child a Jew if they ha e a father who is a Jew. This is purely to serve the self cent redness of the parties who have no knowledge whatsover, of any Torah. The simple law is, from a Jewish mother, because she houses the baby and her blood food oxygen is the definition then the child is a Jew. End of. Why bother having reform, it's an excuse to just hang onto something Jewish, why not just dump it all, ? Because being a Jew is something g No Jew can forget, get rid of or leave. For all those married to Gentiles, my heart aches for you, try reading a good Jewish book from a proper Jewish source, reform amd conservative liberal etc, all are country clubs. Please save your poor children from the craziness of being screwed up. A Jew is a Jew. There are no halfs. I a an observant Jewish worn with lovely kids who respect all people, no matter what faith, sadly other Jews do not think their brethren deserve respect. Save your children from the confusion. Don't tell them they are Jewish if their. Other is a catholic, a Protestant or anything else. Very very sad. If you. Arry a gentile, that is the end result, gentile children, and you cannot change this fact. I know it's a hard pill, but, if you want Jewish, Marry a jew

43 comments

old comment by

@D Laurier

They have left judaism. they are no longer jewish.

"Jewish" is also an ethnic label. I have a number of atheist Jews in my family who'd be interested in why you think you have the right to decide what they are.

@Ahad Ha-am

It's in our religion: if you have a Jewish mother, you're a Jew.

That, as with so many other things in Judaism, is an opinion that is not shared by all Jews, even all religious ones. This is, as I said, pretty standard stuff in polemics between Jews, however badly expressed. Quite how it deserves a Fundie Index of 32 is beyond me.

Matrilineal descent arose because tribal descent came from the father's side which determined inheritance and the status of kohanim. As tribal status has hardly been a pressing issue for nearly three thousand years, I think that non-Orthodox Jews are justified in dispensing with it.

Worryingly, there do seem to be a number of people here eager to display their ignorance of Jews, Judaism and all things Jewish. People who criticize Christianity on this site usually have a good idea of how Christianity works and how it is practised and what its tenets are; this is all to the good as criticism from a position of knowledge is both more pertinent and potent than criticism out of ignorance. The same level of knowledge about Judaism, or anything Jewish, is, alas, comparatively rare here.

old comment by D Laurier

@ the one with no name.
Judaism is not an ethnicity.
Judaism is a religion shared across several ethnicitys.
Arab jews are ethnicaly different and distinct from north Ukranian jews... who in turn are ethnicaly different and distinct from Etheopian jews.
I find that when people talk about a "jewish ethnicity", they are usualy refering to white jews of european descent, as though no other jews exist.
Are you one of those who deny the jewishness of Arab jews?
Do you reject the jewishness of Etheopian jews?

Your so-called "atheist jews" are either atheist OR jews.
One can no more be an atheist jew than an atheist christian or an atheist muslim.
Judaism is the belief in, and worship of, a god named Jehova/Yawah.
That is all it is.

Again, an ex-jew is NO LONGER a jew. Just as an ex-christian is no longer a christian... and an ex-muslim is no longer a muslim.

old comment by Hasan Prishtina

Judaism is not an ethnicity.

Judaism is a religion; Jewishness is an ethnic identity. It is possible to be Jewish without being religious. There are such things as Jewish customs that, while they have religious origins, are not strictly tied to religion, in much the same way as Swedish or Italian customs. However, because Jews have a distinct religion, you believe that, alone of all people, Jews qua Jews need to be erased from the history books.

Are you one of those who deny the jewishness of Arab jews?
Do you reject the jewishness of Etheopian jews?

Either you have not been paying attention to any of the comments on previous threads or you are being deliberately offensive. I have made continuous references to their being Jews and, yes, they do have common customs with Jews elsewhere, including Europe and Central and Southern Africa.

I find it interesting that when it comes to your racial Israelis-as-Nazis rhetoric against Israel, it's all about White Jews but when it comes to denying the existence of Jews as a people, suddenly the very people ignored in the first scenario, nearly half the population of Israel, get wheeled out in support of the elimination of Jews as a people.

Your so-called "atheist jews" are either atheist OR jews.

So D Laurier has the right to tell millions of people what they are, no matter what they happen to think. However you do have allies. There is a neo-nazi movement in Serbia called Obraz. It views those Serbs who are outside the Serbian Orthodox Church as no longer being Serbs. The neo-nazi Golden Dawn takes a similar view concerning Greeks outside the Greek Orthodox Church. They in turn have allies with similar beliefs in Russia, such as Pamyat. They also happen to agree on their views about Jews. It sounds like those are not to far from yours.

old comment by Hasan Prishtina

I apologize for the spelling errors above.

It may be worth noting that legal systems across the developed world, as well as less developed countries, such as here in Kosovo, recognize that a Jew can be ethnically Jewish without any attachment to religion. Their weight of understanding and experience counts for something, I think, because they take the constituent elements of an ethnic group. For example, there are many Jewish languages; if a Jew becomes an atheist, does that mean he or she stops speaking and thinking in Ivrit or Jidi or Yiddish and starts speaking some other language? The poetry on my shelves written by atheist Hebrew- and Yiddish-speakers seems to suggest otherwise. What was the idea behind Birobidjan if not as part of the Soviet nationalities policy? Even Lenin and Stalin could see that the Jews were an ethnic group.

Strange that one doesn't have to be "atheist OR Armenian," "atheist OR Druze" or "atheist OR Parsee," just "atheist OR Jewish." Hmm.

I can understand why someone who wishes to eradicate Israel may wish to deny the existence of the Jewish people independently from Judaism, but you can't just magic it away.