[rdb3]

You want Jewishness to be a "race." It is not, it is a religion first and foremost.

I understand your statement about it being a religion "first and foremost," but I in no way intended to intimate that it's a racial thing. I don't believe that at all. What I'm speaking towards is the ethnicity of being Jewish. And, of course, ethnicity can encompass all races at once yet remain a true ethnicity.

I would call Sammy Davis Jr. a Jew without any reservations, and the CCNY professor who converts to Christianity is not a Jew. His grandparents might have been, but he is not.

As for the City College professor no longer being of the Jewish faith is correct. But that does not speak towards the professor's ethnicity, which would still be Jewish.

So the fulcrum of your argument is the Jewish faith. But this totally leaves out the ethnic composition which is also valid, is it not? Also, since the Jewish faith is your sticking point, is a Jew who is an atheist still a Jew?

It's very circular in my mind.

[babble-on]

I have spent a lot of time on this question with you. Obviously "Jewishness" is both. It is a religion and an ethnicity. But in the case of the Jews for Jesus, they are referring FALSELY, to their religion. They are claiming to part of the Jewish RELIGION, and not merely the Jewish ethnicity as they argue for the divinity of Christ. That is really what we are talking about here on this thread.

I think people who are interested in clear communication define their terms before they start talking. If I were the City College professor in my example (I ain't, by the way) my statement of my cultural identity in answer to the question from, say, a man from Mars of "What are you?" would be a somewhat tortured locution on the order of, "well, ethnically I am Jewish, but i do not practice that religion." I would be saying that to do a favor to my questioner so that he could have some help in "fixing" where I fit in culturally in this country. I believe very strongly that if the person in this example "got religion" even if it were a rediscovery of his Jewish faith, his answer would change, and I think that you are quite right that the logical tension between a faith and a cultural background is a communication issue. But "ethnic Jewishness" is not a permanent state, not is there even a reliable set of cultural signifiers to say what an ethnic Jew is. Especially with the degree of intermarriage and "assimilation" (another diabolically hard word to define or talk about) in the past 100 years. I can tell you that I lived in Germany for three years in the 90's, and not one person ever suspected I was Jewish unless I told them, to the extent that I heard a lot of casual anti-Semitism which they would not have said if they had known. So the best Jew spotters in the world could not tell that this blonde-haired blue eyed kid from Tennessee was 100% Jewish.