Everything when it comes to Jewish identity comes with a ton of nuance. I’m not Jewish, but I have known Jews throughout my life and even for them it’s not something they all agree on. Part of that is because Judaism is a religion and Jew is an ethnic group (with many racially separate sub-groups) with some pretty unique qualifiers. For example some only consider you Jewish if your mother was Jewish. If your dad is and mom isn’t then you’re half Jewish. There are also secular or atheist Jews who are not religious but still part of the group. Some among that number have no ties to the ethnic group (let’s say they got adopted as a baby by a Christian family). It’s a super complex thing.
And Israel doesn’t help the conversation at all with their bullshit ethnostate acting like they are the “Jewish homeland” when you have European Jews with no genetic ties to Israel at all - their ancestors were converts centuries ago as part of the diaspora.
It’s actually one of the fundamental things that makes antisemitism such a dogshit idea that must be fought at every turn. Where do you draw the line? Who’s in and who’s out? The same way that racist codes like Jim Crow “one drop” rules were always arbitrarily enforced bullshit even when they tried to pin it down with their anti-science eugenics and calipers.
But it is a super fascinating subject and if Jewish comrades wanna talk about it I’m sure you’ll learn loads more from them than a guy like me.
As for the white passing thing, yeah, it’s crazy. I can share an amusing anecdote tangentially related to the subject of passing: my grandpa was a native and when he went to Chinatown dudes would just talk to him in Cantonese because they thought he was one of them. He’d get all flustered and apologize, it was funny stuff.
my grandpa was a native and when he went to Chinatown dudes would just talk to him in Cantonese because they thought he was one of them. He’d get all flustered and apologize, it was funny stuff.
I can relate: I used to get this a lot from native Americans and didn’t understand why until I took a DNA test. The test said I was 2/3rds native American and it shocked me since my family lore establishes that we’re mostly Spanish w a single drop of native American ancestry; the older generations still continue to insist that we’re almost entirely Spanish despite the DNA tests results showing that we’re even more sub Saharan African than Spanish.
![[CW: racism] We’re so close to getting an answer to the question of whether Italians are white](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/85f32639-4f7a-45cc-b969-7c80edfe8504.jpeg){kind=link}
Everything when it comes to Jewish identity comes with a ton of nuance. I’m not Jewish, but I have known Jews throughout my life and even for them it’s not something they all agree on. Part of that is because Judaism is a religion and Jew is an ethnic group (with many racially separate sub-groups) with some pretty unique qualifiers. For example some only consider you Jewish if your mother was Jewish. If your dad is and mom isn’t then you’re half Jewish. There are also secular or atheist Jews who are not religious but still part of the group. Some among that number have no ties to the ethnic group (let’s say they got adopted as a baby by a Christian family). It’s a super complex thing.
And Israel doesn’t help the conversation at all with their bullshit ethnostate acting like they are the “Jewish homeland” when you have European Jews with no genetic ties to Israel at all - their ancestors were converts centuries ago as part of the diaspora.
It’s actually one of the fundamental things that makes antisemitism such a dogshit idea that must be fought at every turn. Where do you draw the line? Who’s in and who’s out? The same way that racist codes like Jim Crow “one drop” rules were always arbitrarily enforced bullshit even when they tried to pin it down with their anti-science eugenics and calipers.
But it is a super fascinating subject and if Jewish comrades wanna talk about it I’m sure you’ll learn loads more from them than a guy like me.
As for the white passing thing, yeah, it’s crazy. I can share an amusing anecdote tangentially related to the subject of passing: my grandpa was a native and when he went to Chinatown dudes would just talk to him in Cantonese because they thought he was one of them. He’d get all flustered and apologize, it was funny stuff.
Aka the dumbest shit ever.
I can relate: I used to get this a lot from native Americans and didn’t understand why until I took a DNA test. The test said I was 2/3rds native American and it shocked me since my family lore establishes that we’re mostly Spanish w a single drop of native American ancestry; the older generations still continue to insist that we’re almost entirely Spanish despite the DNA tests results showing that we’re even more sub Saharan African than Spanish.