Is Judaism a religion AND an ethnicity?

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after hearing you guys talk, i have came to a decision. i honestly doubt that judaism is an ethnicity.

also, do you honestly believe a religion can be in your DNA?!

next, people are going to be telling me that christianity is an ethnicity

strike ethnicity and insert culture.

but the jewish culture consists of people who actually believe in the god/ jewish religion, and people who might not believe in the god/religion but still want to be a part of the services, holidays, etc. just because they get that warm feeling inside. that doesn't make judaism part of your DNA. in fact, many people in every religion do the exact same thing!

Indicating that a culture, rather than a theology is at the center.

but the jewish culture consists of people who actually believe in the god/ jewish religion, and people who might not believe in the god/religion but still want to be a part of the services, holidays, etc. just because they get that warm feeling inside. that doesn't make judaism part of your DNA. in fact, many people in every religion do the exact same thing!

ok, but it still isn't an ethnicity

Ethnicity is what makes a group of humans particular and identifiable. Culture is the better part of that.

In addition to a shared history and values there is environment. These together make a people what they are.

It is not a matter of biological inheritance and it never was.

ruveyn

Judaism is not a religion and an ethnicity, but there is a religion called Judaism and a Jewish ethnicity.

Jews can be a religion and a ethnicity it depends on your view Hitler and the Nazi Party thought the Jews were both.

Judaism is a religion. Ashkenazim, Sephardim, and Mizrahiyim are ethnic groups within Judaism. Jews have a common genetic descent tracing back to Abraham, but the separate ethnic groups have different physical features. Ashkenazi Jews look like white gentiles (even the Nazis couldn't tell them apart) but I can tell Ashkenazi Jews apart from Sephardic Jews. Diaspora Jews assimilated their gentile hosts to some degree.

You are ignoring the converts who have no racial (genetic) connection to the ancient Israelites.

The entire nation of the Khazars converted to Judaism. Racially they are closer to the Turks than the Semites or the Persians.

Also Jews had no trouble intermarrying with the locals wherever they settled. So mixed blood has really diluted the racial inheritance. Judaism is transmitted through culture, values and custom not through blood.

If you really want to get down to it, the entire Human Race is a bunch of cousins related by blood to small group that emigrated from Africa between 250,000 and 150,000 years ago. Humans are not Brothers. They are Cousins.

ruveyn

http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/06/tracing-the-roots-of-jewishness.html

Some writers, notably Arthur Koestler in his 1976 book The Thirteenth Tribe, have argued that the Ashkenazis stem from a Turkic tribe in Central Asia called the Khazars, who converted to Judaism in the 8th century. And historian Shlomo Sand of Tel Aviv University in Israel argues in his book The Invention of the Jewish People, translated into English last year, that most modern Jews do not descend from the ancient Land of Israel but from groups that took on Jewish identities long afterward.

Such notions, however, clash with several recent studies suggesting that Jewishness, including the Ashkenazi version, has deep genetic roots. In what its authors claim is the most comprehensive study thus far, a team led by geneticist Harry Ostrer of the New York University School of Medicine concludes today that all three Jewish groups—Middle Eastern, Sephardic, and Ashkenazi—share genomewide genetic markers that distinguish them from other worldwide populations.

Ostrer and his colleagues analyzed nuclear DNA from blood samples taken from a total of 237 Ashkenazi and Middle Eastern Jews in New York City and Sephardic Jews in Seattle, Washington; Greece; Italy; and Israel. They compared these with DNA from about 2800 presumably non-Jewish individuals from around the world. The team used several analytical approaches to calculate how genetically similar the Jewish groups were to each other and to the non-Jewish groups, including a method called identity by descent (IBD), which is often used to determine how closely two individuals are related.

Individuals within each Jewish group had high levels of IBD, roughly equivalent to that of fourth or fifth cousins. Although each of the three Jewish groups showed genetic admixture (interbreeding) with nearby non-Jews, they shared many genetic features, suggesting common roots that the team estimated went back more than 2000 years. Ashkenazi Jews, whose genetic profiles indicated between 30% to 60% admixture with Europeans, nevertheless clustered more closely with Middle Eastern and Sephardic Jews, a finding the researchers say is inconsistent with the Khazar hypothesis. "I would hope that these observations would put the idea that Jewishness is just a cultural construct to rest," Ostrer says.

Individuals within each Jewish group had high levels of IBD, roughly equivalent to that of fourth or fifth cousins. Although each of the three Jewish groups showed genetic admixture (interbreeding) with nearby non-Jews, they shared many genetic features, suggesting common roots that the team estimated went back more than 2000 years. Ashkenazi Jews, whose genetic profiles indicated between 30% to 60% admixture with Europeans, nevertheless clustered more closely with Middle Eastern and Sephardic Jews, a finding the researchers say is inconsistent with the Khazar hypothesis. "I would hope that these observations would put the idea that Jewishness is just a cultural construct to rest," Ostrer says.

You miss the point. The content of people's minds are not determined by their genome but by their experience and their upbringing. Jews are Jews because of what they learned from their parents and teachers, not because of their chromosomes.

ruveyns

That's not what Jewish law says. I'm Jewish because my mother is Jewish, not because of something she taught me.