I'm a Jewish Atheist, ask me anything

It would be anti-Semitic if you harboured any prejudice or discrimination against a person, regardless of how they treated and impacted on you, purely because either their mother is Jewish, making them Jewish, or because they follow the Jewish religion.

One can be ethnically Jewish, in the same way that one can be ethnically British, Chinese or Indian.

Dear simbasdragon, i feel embarrassed by many of the idiotic posts above. please acccept my apology on behalf of the silent majority of normal TSR members.

This, so much.

I get that someone might have a problem with the whole idea of Jews having their own 'extra' ethnicity etc, and question the logic of it.

But the fact that people are responding to the OP as if they've just made this **** up (or Jews in general have made this **** up very recently) is painful.

Painful!!!.

Calm down will you. Most people are not PHD's in Jewish history so some us simply don't know.

You don't need to get offended by it.

Some people are just so sensitive.

never mind... here are some nice recipes for you:

http://www.joyofkosher.com/

this one i am liking:

http://www.joyofkosher.com/recipes/nonna-miris-beans-in-a-flask-in-the-slow-cooker/

How could you be an atheist and jewish at the same time? As i know, Judaism is a religion of different ethnicities, just as christianity and Islam..


Any how, i read in new researches that the fact that says "Solomon's Temple location in palestine" is a myth, and its real location in Yemen, let say they found it true, do you think Israel will leave palestine land and go to Yemen instead?

So if I was choosing to vote for a politician I wouldn't personally vote for a Jewish person or any person of faith as I believe that their faith would make them reckless. Does this discrimination count as Antisemitism?



Posted from TSR Mobile

It's an ethno-religious group, you can theoretically be Jewish and Muslim, Jewish and Christian, Jewish and Atheist

People must have met a Jewish person, but even then there are loads of other such groups:

Coptic Christians in the Middle East
Zoroastrians from Persia
The Amish
The Yazidis
The Druze
Samaritans

I don't see how anyone can not know this...

1. Nonsense. Followers of a religion have a name. Christians and Christianity. Jews and Judaism. This is a fact.

2. That sounds like a cultural belief to me as this conversion is a cultural ritual.

3. According to who? It makes no sense. You apply different criteria of Jewish-ness depending on whether someone has Jewish parents. That's not how definitions work. A Christian is he who belives in Christian tenets regardless of anything else. A Chinese person is he who either has a Chinese passport or is born from parents belonging to a Chinese ethnic group regardless of anything else. That's how definitions work. Jewish-ness is either a word to describe a follower of Judaism or a word to describe someone who partakes in Jewish culture. Alternatively, you are using one word to convey two different meanings. But still, a Jewish Atheist (assuming by atheist that he partakes in no Jewish culture) makes no sense.

Definitions and identities are not created equal, there are formulated in variable ways. Apart from the sociological fact that culture cannot be separated into discrete entities whereby one can immediately quantify whether one is participating in Jewish culture or not, Jewishness simply cannot be equivalenced to all other forms of identity-formation.

Since identity-formation is, to put it as its more simplest form, a process of self- and other- definitions, your criticisms are misplaced for the following reasons:

1) He's already admitted to taking part in 'Jewish culture' in your rather clunky construction
2) Under Halakhic law - in its more literalist interpretation in Orthodox Judaism - matrilineality is the spoken rule. Who are you to disagree with the religion's own considerations of what makes a Jew?
3) Please do not assume that atheism implies non-religion. It really doesn't. Atheism has no content - it is a position on a single issue - weakly-defined as lacking a belief in God and strongly defined as disbelieving in God. One can find no contradiction in being a Jewish atheist.

I do not see any benefits from knowing this information, so i do not think it would be a disaster if i do not know it!!!

I completely agree, I mean, with an attitude like that, the only thing you will be good for is serving takeaway food.

1. Fair enough but then it is worth saying that he is a cultural Jew and not a religious one. Using a word to mean two different things is not useful.

2. I am not disagreeing with the religion's own considerations I am disagreeing that a label made by this rule is subjective and thus we should adopt a more objective stance on this (as we do with other cultures and religions) or just ask the relevant individual. Just saying that GeneralJohnny is Christian because the Pope says so is subjective.

3. Now you are mistaken there. Atheism implies lack of belief in the existence of a God or similar supernatural forces. In so far as a religion implies the existence of a God or supernatural forces, atheism and religion are exclusive. This much is logical. So if "Jewish" is meant as follower of Judaism, it is contradictory. But if it is meant as member of a community that partakes in Jewish culture but not in the religious bits, then it is a non-contradictory one just like "White Muslim" or "Chinese Christian" are.

I completely agree, I mean, with an attitude like that, the only thing you will be good for is serving takeaway food.

Exactly as the title suggests, just please don't be disrespectful or abusive.

1. stop trolling
2.stop acting childish ..
3. stop disrespecting people who work in takeaway " btw, your posts show that they are much better than you" ..
4. although i do not classify people according to their qualifications or their jobs, i am a dentist, so back off..

That BS and you know it.

Why is it you haven't got a degree in Mathematics Biology Physics and Chemistry yet?

"With an attitude like that, the only thing you will be good for is serving takeaway food."

I personally don't give a damn about Judaism or any religion and will not learn anything about it. Because all of that info to me is useless. Including the cultures they have created.



Posted from TSR Mobile

I've heard it said that "Jewish" is both a race and a religion, but to be honest that really only applies to Israel. Hence why, ethnically, people of Palestine are essentially the same race as people from Israel, but their religion differs so much that they call themselves a different race.

In other countries though, to be Jewish really means you follow Judaism. Nobody for example could possibly be a Jewish Christian (as someone a few posts above suggested) because it is a fundamental belief of Jews that the saviour has not yet arrived, whereas it is a fundamental belief of Christianity that Jesus was the saviour and he very much already arrived. You really cannot contradict two major religions like that with such an oxymoron.

I would suggest that the OP does a little more research before calling himself a Jewish Atheist. If he means he has some Israeli lineage, then okay, he has Israeli lineage, and comes from a Jewish family, but by choosing atheism he has renounced his religion and is therefore only Israeli by heritage, not Jewish.