Re: “Tim Wise: Jew or Gentile?”
Today, an someone posted this comment to an old blog item, where I had showed that Tim Wise, who claims to be a Jew, is a fraud.
Can we please not be so elitist about Jewish identity? Please? Maybe calm down, just a little?
My family is Jewish, I was raised Jewish, I had a Bat Mitzvah (and survived and everything), I observe the holidays and I am active in my campus Hillel group.
My mother is not Jewish. Yes, I'm pretty sure my Dad is my biological father. Whatever doubts you have about your mother are really for you should work out on your own.
I still call myself Jewish. This doesn't somehow make me a Nazi. I mean, I'm not the one obsessing over bloodlines and ethnicity -- that's all you, buddy.
I'm reform (the rules are different) and while Judaism is important to me I never felt the need to formally convert.
Certainly not so that you can decide I'm Jewish enough.
I responded,
Anonymous Gentile,
You calm down. Don’t tell anyone else to calm down.
I’m elitist, in that I insist that 2 + 2 = 4.
Words have meanings. Things in the world have meanings. Your family is not Jewish, you weren’t raised Jewish, and you did not have a Bat Mitzvah.
“Whatever doubts you have about your mother are really for you should work out on your own.”
That statement was as much out of leftfield as everything else you said.
You are apparently a part of a world of frauds, who all seem to be whites living in First-World countries, who think that they and their allies (but not everyone in general) can call themselves anything they wish (except for black), reality be damned—men who call themselves women, women who call themselves men, and now, gentiles who call themselves Jews, etc.
You’re not a Jew—stop deceiving people.
"My mother is not Jewish." Then neither are you. Period.
ReplyDeleteYou don't become a Jew by calling yourself one because you're in the mood to be a Jew that day. There are rules.