So, nu, who's a Jew ? (part 1)
So, as the title states, who exactly is a Jew? And who isn't one? At a time of unprecedented mixing between the races we find ourselves in a society inhabited by folk of all hues and mixtures of traditions.
My own children have the culturally confused heritage of English secular Judaism mixed with Polish Catholicism. My wife comes from a German/Polish background; her German mother is an Atheist and Polish father a Catholic. What does that make our children? According to one definition they are not Jewish by birth, but another tradition would make them as Jewish as they wish to be and yet another tradition, the Nazi one, albeit for the wrong purposes, would make them Jewish on account of their grandparents background and nothing else.
If you go to Israel and expect to see a nation of olive skin and brown eyes you'll be surprised at the blond hair and blue eyes you'll see, even in that bastion of national identity, the Israeli Army. These days you can't (necessarily) measure your jewishness by the size of your nose.
Mind you I am reminded of a true story of a friend, a gentile, who only discovered when he was in his twenties that his father was Jewish. His first words at this discovery were, "Ah, so that explains the nose!". This story aside, we need a better way of defining jewishness, which brings us back to our original question, "Who is a Jew?" ....
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