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>he wasn't raised Jewish, and wasn't bar mitzvahed. But he >self-identifies as Jewish, and I feel like I have about as >much right to say that he's not really Jewish as I would have >telling a mixed race person with light skin that they can't >self-identify as black.
Well, black people tend to take whoever wants to claim it (if anything, we try to claim too many people), which is why we're generally happy taking mixed-raced people (also, unlike white people, black people tend to feel improved by whiteness, while white people tend to feel tainted by blackness, no social science mumbo jumbo-o)
Neither here nor there, though: Jewish is a cultural/religions group more than it is an ethnic group at this stage, and so cultural identification and being "raised" a certain way is a perfectly fair criteria if that's what you want to use
>It would be hypocritical of me to criticize him for >identifying as Jewish when he doesn't practice the religion, >since I haven't been to a regular friday night service in like >15 years. But being bar mitzvahed is such a fundamental part >of Jewish religious and cultural identity that it's hard to >take him seriously as a Jew without it. And it makes me think >of what's going to happen when my non-Jewish wife and I have >kids. I refuse to budge on the issue of my hypothetical son >being bar mitzvahed. She refuses to budge on having the child >baptized. Somewhere in between those two events is up for >grabs.
Well, damn, how the fuck y'all gonna settle this?
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