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July 12, 2007 | 11:07 pm

Who is a half-Jew?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There is a really interesting story in today’s Jewish Journal about the growing number of “half-Jews” fighting for acceptance. Jewish denominations differ on conversion requirements and whether the Jewish lineage comes from the mother or father, but each agrees that there is no such thing as a half-Jew—either you are or you aren’t.

You can’t have two identities, they say. But what about Ms. Cohen and the many like her?

Georgiana Cohen, a 27-year-old Web content specialist in Somerville, Mass., was raised by a non-Jewish mother but spent five years at the Donna Klein Jewish Academy in Boca Raton, Fla. That experience, she says, “legitimized a last name I carried around like a fake ID.”

The split between life at home and at school was stark, she recalls.

“My childhood was all Christmas trees and Easter candy,” Cohen says. “Meanwhile, back in Boca, I sang folk songs like ‘Jerusalem of Gold,’ led weekly minyan services with my best friend and captured Hebrew spelling bee trophies.”

She refers to herself now, somewhat flippantly, as “half-Jewish and half ‘fill-in-the-blank.’ “

The broader question—Who is a Jew?—is one of the most vexing for world Jewry and me personally. Both my grandmothers were Jewish and so was one grandfather; I look like a Jew, walk like a Jew and quack like a Jew—must be a duck—but I believe in Christianity, which is anathema to Judaism. So am I a Jew?

Who is a Jew? | 8 Comments — Leave your comment

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Folks here in Israel would agree that you are no longer Jewish because you are a Christian convert ie you have strayed from the tribal belief system by embracing this messiah, JC.  Perhaps ethnically, you can claim semitic bloodlines.  Jew: a race question or a belief system?

Comment by Izzy Bee on 7/13/07 at 12:57 am

Ambiguity Bites! It’s simple, to be in group X, you have attribute(s) Y. There is no half kosher, regardless of how you describe kosher. It is either kosher or not. Traditionally, If your mother is Jewish, so are you regardless of how you are raised or believe. If you find yourself in a church, on Yom Kippur, eating a Big Mac and your Mom is Jewish, you’re still Jewish.

Comment by Avigdor on 7/13/07 at 5:15 am

I wonder in a country like Russia, where passports list “Jew” for ethnicity, how would the government identify me?

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 7/13/07 at 5:40 am

In Russia you would have had the choice if only one parent was Jewish. They would not have cared if it was the mother or father. My father in-Law is considered Jewish according to Russia with just a Jewish father.

I actually just wrote about this topic, spurred on by the recent JPPPI convention.

Some will make the distinction between Halachicly Jewish (Jewish by current normative Jewish law) and plain Jane Jewish. Being one does not necessarily include you in the other group. I study Messianic Jews and them being Halachicly Jewish does not matter in the eyes of many liberal Jews.

If we want, we can go back to the Nazi identifier of Judaism - you’re a Jew if you have at least one Jewish grandparent.

Comment by Gil on 7/13/07 at 11:27 am

It’s interesting how the Orthodox are more inclusive of a person like me, who’s opted out religiously, than the Reform. But I think Gil closed with the important point—who the Nazis thought was Jewish. Much less so for my generation, but clearly anti-Semitism has helped determine who is Jewish and unified those who are.

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 7/13/07 at 1:30 pm

Brad,
You are not a Jew.  You are a Christian.  Period.

Hey, my mother is a vegetarian, my grandmothers are vegetarians, I dress like a vegetarian and love to eat vegetarian food , but I eat steak and chicken and fish and pork.

Am I a vegetarian?

You are of Jewish origin (or mostly Jewish origin), but buddy—you are no longer a Jew if you believe in Christianity…..

Do you really, really believe that BS about Jesus??? It makes NO sense and is completely contradictory not only to Judaism but to the original religion. If you do believe that Jesus was the “son” of G-d, you aren’t a Jew….

Why are you so involved in Jewish stuff and the Jewish press if you are a Christian?

I am not trying to diss you, but you can’t be a Jew and a Christian…

Just like you can’t be a vegetarian and eat meat…

Comment by Anonymous on 8/04/07 at 2:28 pm

Children please, please!!!

All you AMERICANS(and others) who have even the slightest hereditary connection to any type of circumsiced “sand nigger”, “towel-head” and pork-forbearing adhearant should really stop this embarassing chipping away at the the collective world jewish population and focus on what’s really important between G*D and Man: And that is the triumphant reality of JEWISH SURVIVAL!!!  Starting from the fact that the ancient Romans failed to TOTALLY eradicate HEBREWS from the “known world”, to the Judiac\Socratic\Ammmenite “revanche” embodied in the ministry of Hillel and rabbi Joshua Bar Joseph Emmanuel and his apostles(no, I’m not a ‘Jew for Jesus’, so cool your jets!); To the immeasureable contributions of anyone even suspected of being a Jew in contributing to the advancement of Eurasiano cultural and scientific civilization(Let use Rembrandt as one stelar example). I say again, STOP TORTURING YOURSELVES(for sport, I imagine) AND DO NOT TOLERATE ANYONE ELSE WHO HARRASSES YOU ON THIS POINT! You are who you determine youselves to be(And haven’t you all done splendidly so over the past one hundred and fifty years?).  The only thing that should matter is that if your deterministic life profits some good among your fellow humanity. That was the message of Christ. Moses, all the varying ‘doubting thomases’ called prophets, the most divine brothers Dr. M.L.King and (the) Mahatma Ghandi and all of we divine little fools crying in the wilderness.

Now, as for Hollywood(with due apologies to the woman whose husband the area he originally named in her honor,);  This ‘beast’ is the best innovation resulting from Organized Crime in the early twentieth century, bringing together every satanic soul-destroying vice conceived on this planet.  It’s ‘reel time’ has rarely told the truth about human history except to advance
the Anglo-Saxons persuassion and(again I say) to degrade the human condition for profit and pass this off as entertainment and culture. (The best analogy and congruence that I can criticaaly offer is this “Rap-Bastard” subculture of which its adherents equate bad-rhyming, didactic ‘musac’ with degradation and HOT LEAD!!!

Lastly, to stay on point: Being a J-E-W, being jewish, or claiming or disclaiming to have any jewish heritage
should be a matter of pride that any J-E-W-S still exist on earth at all; That the HEBREW language still spoken at all today among approximately the five millions people who speak it.(That unlike the academic latin or aramahaic, the latter which is spoken in only a few locals on the planet and had thought to be dead a century ago).

You only divide yourselves and don’t appreciate the demoninational benefits such as the american “Goyam” enjoys by dint of the U.S. Constititutions’s superb clause on seperation of relgion and politics!!!

However, if you want to continue bickering over whose prosnatal features warrants going under the professional knife because not all can get that (twenty-somrthing) Christe Brinkley look, then haleluah and more power to ya!!!

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P.S: If you doubt that Jews’ influences were confined to The Holy Land, please check out the
amazing discovery of a buried KHAZAR city in Turrkey, close to the Russian border.

Comment by Renard A.Atkins on 9/25/08 at 6:18 pm

12 Tribes of Israel

1) Judah: African-Americans (Blacks)
2) Benjamin: West Indies/Caribbean
3) Levi: Haitians
4) Ephraim: Puerto Ricans
5) Asher: Colombians/Uruguayans
6) Gad: North American Indians
7) Issachar: Mexicans
8) Simeon: Dominicans
9) Manasseh: Cubans
10) Zebulon: Guatemala/Panama
11) Naphtali: Argentina/Chile
12) Reuben: Seminole Indians

Comment by LOL on 11/04/09 at 9:26 am

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