Are the Jews/Judaism a race or a religion ?

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Not sure of how this is related to what I said since the subject IS genes and is NOT the content of Jewish people's minds since "race" is a biological and not a cultural classification.

The software programed into your brain is your culture. Your culture has to do with both your religion and your ethnicity, but not your race.

Ofcourse if your using the word "race" in the Victorian sense (basically as synonoum for ethnic group or nationality) then yes the Jews could be called a "race".
But the victorians considered each ethnic group in Europe to be its own "race", and northern and southern Italians were listed as seperate "races" by the US immigration service, and Southern Whites regarded Northern Whites in their same USA as that "Yankee race".

But in the twentieth centurey "race" came to mean a biological subdivision of the human species analogous to "subspecies" in wild organisms. Jews are a small group genetically indistinct from Arabs in the Middle East so they cant be considered a "race" unto themselves. .

To put it another way: European Whites might be classed as a "race".
And West African Blacks might also be classed as a "race".

The former group includes the Czechs - who are an ethnic group but not in themselves a "race". The latter includes the Yorba of Nigeria who similarly are an ethnic group but not in themselves a "race". The Jews are analogous to the Czechs, or to the Yorba, but not to the whole White race, nor to the Whole Black Race. If the Jews were as distinct from even other semetic middle easterners as blacks are from whites then yes they would then be a "race" unto themselves. But Jews are not like the Ainu in Japan who are a small group physically distinct enough from both their Japanese neighbors and from everyone else on the planet to be classed as their own "race".

Yes- that is the thesis of the book "the 13th Tribe" by Arthur Koestler ( famous for the novel "Darkness at Noon" which we read in HS Lit, and author many other books. His thesis being that the Ashkenazai came to eastern europe not from west european jews moving east but were descended from the Khazars moving westward.

The Khazars lived at the mouth of the Ural River north of the caspian sea - right where Europe and Asia meet in what is now the Russian Republic.

In the dark ages the tribes leaders realized that praying to idols was becoming passe and it was time to pick a monotheistic relgion, but which one?
Islam was spreading through central asia, and christianity was spreading through europe. They figured that since "there is Judaism in both Islam and in christianity" to convert the tribe to judaism so that they could get in good with the chambers of comerce in both europe and in asia and trade with both!

It worked for a while. They built up a big powerful empire with farflung trade routes. And they were viewed as "protectors of jews". Prominent rabbis from Spain and Bagdad traveled to Khazaria.

But after a few centuries invaaders from both east and west beat the crap out of them and they finally vanished as a people. Or.. did they?

Most historians believed that this "conversion" to Judaism was a political stunt performed only by the elite. But according Koestler it was a heartfelt conversion by the whole tribe. And when their kingdom collapsed in the early middle ages they dispersed but kept their jewish identity and became the modern Jews of eastern europe.

The book was a best seller when it came out in the early seventies, despite being paned by the experts. Scientists said it contained only crackpot science, and historians said it contained only crackpot history.

Decades later came modern DNA testing techniques. These showed that the Azkenazie Jews of Eastern Europe are infact - Jews- close cousins of the semetic arabs of the middle east and that they probably came from Judea. And that they have no connection with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia like the Khazars. So the already feable theory was finnaly killed off.-and is now beyond dead to the experts. However Koestler's ( himself a Russian Jew living in Britian) book still seems to have a cult following among non-experts.

Ironically- both many Jews, and many antisemites, find comfort for their agendas in Koestler's thesis that many Jews arent really "Jews" ( ie descended from Abraham).

They are distinct from Arabs in a sense that Arabs have darker skin while Jews have white skin. I know that Jews and Arabs came from the same family and simply were living in different territories. But the same is true for any two groups of people, including white and blacks. So, it is possible for two groups of people to start off as the same race and then end up as different races as time goes by. The same could have happened with Jews and Arabs.

I think it is possible to still defend that position despite the studies. First of all, these studies show that both Jews AND Arabs have that gene. Now, since Turks (and, therefore, Khazars) are Arabs, the presence of this gene won't draw a line between them and the Jews. Secondly, you said that Khazars are thought to be "13-th tribe". If so, they would be genetically linked to the other 12 tribes and, therefore, carry this gene. Finally, even if Khazars didn't carry this gene at first, they could have intermarried with actual Jews (the Judaism would permit it since, once they are converted, they are regarded as fully Jewish) and, therefore, their descendants have that gene.

Actually, Turks aren't Arabs. Rather, Turkic peoples had their origin in Central Asia, far away from the Arabian Peninsula.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Being Jewish is solely a matter of mind. It is about values, goals and customs. The fact that one can become Jewish by way of conversion makes it a non-genetic matter. Period.

ruveyn

First of all:

All mideast muslims are NOT Arabs!

Turks ARE NOT ARABS.
Kurds ARE NOT ARABS
Iranians ARE NOT ARABS.
They are all seperate ethnic groups of seperate geographic origins from each other and from the arabs.

Ironically Jews and Arabs are both genetically and Linguistically kissing cousins of each other whereas the Arabic language is as close to Iranian ( for example) as it is to English or to Chinese.

Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic (the language of Jesus) are all related.


Dumbass american reporters may refer to Turkey, or to Iran, as "Arab nations". They are not. Every educated american needs to learn that fast and learn it well for the nation to survive in 21st centurey.

Second: Koestler's book title of "the Thirteenth Tribe" was clever poetic license to convay the very opposite of what youre taking it to mean. He was not saying that the Khazars were one of "the original tribes" but that they
are unrelated outsiders (adopted children so-to-speak of the descendants of those original 12 tribes) who he thinks contributed the ancestry of modern jewry.

Thats possible: Your theory about East European Jews getting their semetic genetic markers by intermarrying with sephardic or West European Jews coming to eastern europe from the other direction.

But its not likely. Those markers would be more diluted than they are, and also east european jewry would show genetic affinity for Turkic peoples of both Turkey and of central asia ( were turks of Turkey also originally came from) but they do not.

In fact Koestler's theory is really a variant in one of the two longstanding competing theories about just who the Ashkenazie Jews are.

One is that they are in fact desendants of the ancient Jews of the Levant ( who got there by way of the Mediterranean and western europe), and the other theory that they are local east europeans ( basically Slavs) who converted to the Jewish way of life in the middle ages.

Instead of being locals Koestler is casting them as slightly less local intruders from east of the European part of Russia- the Khazars of central asia.

The recent genetic studies show that the ashkenazie are for the most part NOT Slavs, and they definetly are not Turkic peoples from farther east, but that they ARE cousins of both other Jews and of modern Arabs.

Sometimes people use the term Arab when the mean Muslim. A majority of the world's Muslims are NOT Arabs. However the religion originated in Arabia and the language of the Koran, the Hadiths and Shariah is Arabic.

ruveyn

Youre probably more versed on those groups than I.
Feel free to keep me posted about anything you learn about the subject.

Have heard about pockets of Jews who still speak Aramaic.
Dont know much about them, but it would appear that could be offshoots of the biblical jews and not converted outsiders because they seem to be semitic people who speak a dialect of the same language spoken by Jesus.

Have seen newstories about the Black Jews of Ethiopia being resettled in Isreal.

Fascinating group.

Ethiopia is an isolated bastion of Christianity cut off from the rest of Christendom when Islam swept across Egypt and North Africa.

The Falasha are a tiny bastion within THAT bastion- people in a small area in a corner of Ethiopia who call themselves Jewish. Everything else I know about them is from what I just now googled.

They have tested Falasha DNA and it turns out that they are genetically just garden variety Ethiopians with little evidence of Levantine origins. But as I understand it- they do practice a folk religion that is recognizable to mainstream Jews as a kind of non-rabinical Judaism.

Somehow Jewish ideas got implanted in the Horn of Africa with little genetic legacy of ancestry from the Jewish homeland.

Quite a conundrum.

There are plenty of fanciful legends about their origins which involve either Moses, or Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The falasha are probably ancient, but probably not THAT ancient.

Their homeland is isolated from the sea coasts but is right at the headwaters of the Blue Nile.

Even before the diaspora there were communities of Jewish merchants in Hellenistic Egypt.

Maybe some jewish adventurers went up the Nile from Egypt in Roman or Hellenistic times to try to corner the market in Frankensense and Myrh by starting a trading post at the source of the products on the far side of the Sahara. The business collapsed but not before they made converts among the locals.
.
Just a wild guess.

An explanation does not make a mistake less so. Nelson Mandela is not an African American. The Romany do not come from Egypt.