[Rich]

This is correct: Jesus Christ was a Christian,

Jesus the Nazarene was almost certainly nnt a historical person.

and his promulgation of Christianity actually rendered him a non-Jew, which would have made him virtually an ethnic exile from the Jewish world.

As such, a Jew who voluntarily gives up their religion and becomes another one cannot make aaliya:

The rights of a Jew under this Law and the rights of an oleh under the Nationality Law, 5712-1952***, as well as the rights of an oleh under any other enactment, are also vested in a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew, except for a person who has been a Jew and has voluntarily changed his/her religion.[10] Law of Reutrn - Wikipedia

So, Jesus Christ today would not qualify as a Jew who can return to Israel, and is a non-Israeli, a non-Jew, though he would be an ethnic Hebrew.... Which is fascinating.

And even if he was a real person, the expulsion of the Christians from the synagogues happened many decades after his death. The Church in Jerusalem, the supposed companions and even alleged brother of Jesus followed the Jewish law. If Jesus really existed then he presumably must have lived according to the Law and taught his followers to follow the Law.

The conventional explanation of Christian origins makes no sense. How did Paul get away with dropping the Law. How did Paul have the authority get to totally upend a religion or a religious denomination of a founder that had only died a couple or so decades earlier. Paul had the authoritiy because none of the other Apostles had met a Jesus that had incarnated on Earth either.

[Pants-of-dog]

Id the only reply to my argument is a strawman and ad hominem, I guess I am right.

[wat0n]

It is neither a straw man nor an ad-hominem to point out @Pants-of-dog is in fact saying racist harassment and assaults of students by leftist protesters should be ignored, and to deduce the rather obvious implication he believes such racism is OK when practiced by leftists. That is just an objective statement of fact.

[Deutschmania]

This is correct: Jesus Christ was a Christian, and his promulgation of Christianity actually rendered him a non-Jew, which would have made him virtually an ethnic exile from the Jewish world.

As such, a Jew who voluntarily gives up their religion and becomes another one cannot make aaliya:

The rights of a Jew under this Law and the rights of an oleh under the Nationality Law, 5712-1952***, as well as the rights of an oleh under any other enactment, are also vested in a child and a grandchild of a Jew, the spouse of a Jew, the spouse of a child of a Jew and the spouse of a grandchild of a Jew, except for a person who has been a Jew and has voluntarily changed his/her religion.[10] Law of Reutrn - Wikipedia

So, Jesus Christ today would not qualify as a Jew who can return to Israel, and is a non-Israeli, a non-Jew, though he would be an ethnic Hebrew.... Which is fascinating.

And to be fair, that might be a good definition of what a Jew is - converts to Judaism CAN do aliya, and ethnic Jews who did not become Christians can do aliya, even if they only have a single grandparent.... Yet, by this very liberal definition, Jesus Christ would not qualify, so I do not think it is a stretch to say He is not a Jew.

Nor would Mary be a Jew - which si why the Wikipedia referring to her as a Jewish woman is wrong.

The modern Israelis are certainly descended from Hebrews to some degree, though the bulk of them are less so than the modern Palestinian.

A huge amount of the Jews in the Mediterranean world were Carthaginian converts. This is, of course, debatable, but it makes a lot of sense, and I would guess that the genetic admixture of ashkenazim is significantly higher than the ethnic Hebrews, Edomites, and Samaritans of the region that progressively converted to Chrsitianity than converted to Islam.

This is one of the ironies of the conflict:

The very Western Jews who spearhead the invasion & colonization of Palestine are likely more descended from Carthaginians who are more Canaanite than Hebrew, and the Palestinians are likely far more Hebrew than the invaders, probably even more Hebrew than the Mizrahi.

I look forward to advances in genetics.


Right, they are Arab in the same sense that Poles are European.

But they are, specifically, Palestinian.

You can now drag out the idea that "Palestinian is an invented group," or hold your peace.

I am not a settler... I have permanent residency, and I could be a citizen already if I wanted to give up my US citizenship but I have decided against that for the time being... I meet the requirements to officially become a Korean, which I am proud of.

But I do recognize that the majority of Koreans view Koreanness purely as by blood, and not even half-Korean people can truly be "Korean," much less a white guy.

That is changing to some degree, though - as in the attitude is changing. It almost has to change.

I am going to be very curious to see my daughter's own sense of identity develop.

I know other 100% non-ethnic Korean children growing up in Korea, and their sense of identity can be very mixed, ranging from those who consider themselves fully Korean, to those who experience a sort of trauma over their status.

It's kind of interesting how we cannot actually get a 'yes' or a 'no' from the children who grow up in homogeneous societies as racial minorities about whether or not they can actually assume the identity. It's different for everyone.

First of all , Jews would still consider both Jesus , and Mary to have been Jews . If they both had regarded Jesus himself as being an avatar of the Divine , then they would have been transgressing Judaic orthodoxy , however this would still not invalidate their inherent Jewish heritage . However , you are indeed correct , as it turns out , that for purposes of the Law of Return , those of Jewish descent is not permitted to make Aliyah , if either they had converted to another religion , or they were born to parents whom are of a religion other than Judaism .

WHO IS A JEW – THE 1962 RUFEISEN (BROTHER DANIEL) SUPREME COURT RULING
The Rufeisen Supreme Court ruling is one case that dealt with the question of who is a Jew. Rufeisen was born to Jewish parents, and during the Holocaust he disguised himself as a Christian. Over time, he actually converted, not just to camouflage his Jewish identity, and became a priest by the name of “Brother Daniel”. He joined the Carmelite order and came to Israel in 1958 to serve as a priest in a monastery in Haifa. Rufeisen applied to make aliya, claiming that he was a Jew despite his conversion. He claimed that his Jewish heritage was not only religious but ethnic, and that he felt connected to the Jewish people.

The Supreme Court did not accept Rufeisen’s appeal. It is important to note that according to Jewish law (halacha), Rufeisen is considered Jewish, even though he converted to Christianity. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ruled that someone who has declared his allegiance to another religion is not considered a Jew for the purposes of the Law of Return. https://lawoffice.org.il/en/aliya-to-israel/

However , such people , at least as long as there is an unbroken maternal line of Jewish descent , would still count as being Jews , according to Halacha . https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1269075/jewish/Is-a-Jew-Who-Converts-Still-Jewish.htm

So for example , the late atheist figure , Christopher Hitchens , would technically be considered a Jew , by this criteria , while I the 11th great-grandson of Rabbi Avigdor Auerbach , of the renowned Auerbach family , would merely be regarded as part of Zera Yisrael , as his daughter Margaretha Barbara Von Auerbach , was wed to Georg Christoph Heyl , whom I take it was a gentle German , and all subsequent descendants were not raised with a Jewish upbringing .

Incidentally , as I had asserted to @wat0n , many if not most Palestinians are themselves genetically Hebrew , even more so in fact than I myself would be . And speaking of nationality compared to citizenship , a number of foreign born people in Japan have acquired Japanese citizenship , although they might not be considered to be part of the Japanese people . This is the difference between a more so homogenous country , such as Japan or Israel , and an ethnically plural country , such as the U.S. and Canada .

[wat0n]

Incidentally , as I had asserted to @wat0n , many if not most Palestinians are themselves genetically Hebrew , even more so in fact than I myself would be . And speaking of nationality compared to citizenship , a number of foreign born people in Japan have acquired Japanese citizenship , although they might not be considered to be part of the Japanese people . This is the difference between a more so homogenous country , such as Japan or Israel , and an ethnically plural country , such as the U.S. and Canada .

Ethnicity is NOT the same as genetic clusters. Two closely genealogically related populations can be of different ethnicities and indeed be in conflict with each other.

This is specially true in the Middle East, where people from different ethnic groups could even intermarry if they shared religion. It's, again, why Kurdish Muslims who moved to what today is Israel/Palestine at some point in time (e.g. during the Ottoman era), were eventually Arabized and became Palestinians with surnames like al-Kurd, el-Kurd, al-Kurdi or other similar variations: They just married Palestinian Muslims, which they could freely do under the Millet system.

[Rich]

Why can Liberals never stop lying. Most Japanese base their identity on race not ethnicity. Biologically based race.

Anyway when people say descended from Jews, what do they mean? Do they mean at any time? I saw a shocking claim recently that archeologically we only find widespread evidence of people following the Jewish law from the middle of the second century BC. Do they mean from rabbinic Jews, from 2nd Temple Jews, do they include Samaritans? At the time of Jesus's supposed birth who was a true Jew and who was a fake traitor Jew was heavily contested.

[Unthinking Majority]

If the only point of this whole discussion is to find ways to think poorly of the protesters, then this is not a logical discussion about politics.

It is, instead, about demonizing the people whom you do not favour.

I am still waiting for a logical or empirical criticism of the protests that is not based on “we do not like them”.

For example, there is logic and evidence to show that accusations of antisemitism have been used to stifle dissent about the actions of the Israeli government, and this has been targeted at the protesters.

We can use logic to show how the interests of the powerful work towards such censorship , and we can use our senses to detect the laws and wahtnot that have been passed.

But instead, centrists and liberals and conservatives all want to talk about how feelings were hurt because protests were less than polite.

As I said, maybe the protestors have some valid points, i dunno. But as long as they continue to act like entitled brats who insist and breaking the law and school rules I hope the universities don't engage in any discussions with them until they stop. And I certainly hope the schools don't reward this childish behaviour with any concessions whatsoever including ending any investments with Israeli companies, at least not until the illegal activity stops. This is how you deal with misbehaving children so if they want to act like children they should be treated as such.

Also, you ignored all of my points and strawmanned them as "I don't like them".

You either have terrible reading comprehension or are just acting in bad faith, and my conclusion is that its both. So there's no point in discussing this topic further with you. I think you're as childish and immature as these occupying protestors. Behave like a grown adult and maybe people would take you more seriously as well. Now go sulk in the corner and throw some more tantrums because you don't always get your way.

[Verv]

I have a lot of stuff going on today and this weekend, and also thought I should just boil a few points down quick, so forgive me for not going quote-by-quote anymore. I think it'll be more enjoyable and less contentious for all of us to do that. I thank @wat0n & @Deutschmania for their contributions, and I will just clarify a few points here and make some new ones, in no particular order:

(1) Yes, Jesus Christ and his mother, the Theotokos, were both Jews, and it is very important that they were Jews descended from the line of King David and the Tribe of Judah. As a Christian, it is also very important for us to recognize that the Jewish people were absolutely the chosen people of God brought to settle that area of land I am calling Palestine.

I point out that both the Muslims & Christians of Palestine and modern Israeli Jews are descendants of the Hebrews who occupied those lands. I sometimes use 'Hebrew' to denote the ethnicity and remove the religious connotations, and to also create distance between them and the modern Jews and also the modern Palestinians. It removes an exclusive claim Jews have to being descended from the Jews of the OT by using a more neutral word that more clearly opens people up to the fact that Palestinians themselves are also descended from those people.

(2) Jews have a connection to Jerusalem/Palestine, undoubtedly, and I think that the British attempting to facilitate a right for them to settle there was correct, and I think if we handled this very correctly, we would have created a very beautiful nation there. In fact, I hope we can get to that point...

But one of the most important things about all this is to proceed in a way without creating animosity or disenfranchising the local population. Sadly, I think the Zionist movement was dead set on creating an officially Jewish state there as there wasn't one anywhere in the world. I can sympathize with that very much, but it actually didn't solve problems. It created more problems, and I think it will continue to create problems...

Yet, as stated at the top of this point, Jews have a right to be there. There is a special connection between their religion and, even for secular Jews, just their bloodline and the history of their ethnicity. This is probably more relevant than ever in the wake of WWII, right...

How could I look any Jewish person in the eyes and tell them, "You have no right to go and live in the land of your ancestors and be part of this great gathering of Jewish people giving birth to this new community." It would be odd and in conflict not just with what I myself believe about human freedom, but also it would go against what I think is beautiful - people reconnecting with their distant ancestors and reuniting to live out a collective fate is very compelling, whether it is the descendants of Native Americans, black slaves, Jews, or even Slavic or Mongolian or Spanish people doing it.

(3a) Jews do not have a right to create a new state on top of a native population in Israel. I can imagine a scenario where people settle a place without any ancestral claim to the land, some place like Idaho or Guyana, where the population density is low and other claims are weak or can both be (a) easily bought off and absorbed justly, and (b) have native people there already not enshrined by some government reflective of their interests... And there, in Montana or Suriname, you can exercise some kind of mandate for a new state that exists for a specific ethnic group.

The Japanese, the Koreans, the Finns - they get away with this because they have already had their ethnogenesis and do not need to shit on any intruders, though arguably some of the Korean servile class were actually descended from Khitans and were foreigners...

... And even then! Even then! Koreans & Japanese, just like the Swedes and the Dutch, experience great pressure to be more open to foreigners, to take in refugees, to ease their ethnic nationalism.

I am quite critical of that, as I want to see their countries remain 90%+ Korean/Japanese and retain their unique identities, but I also equally oppose authoritarianism and totalizing ideologies that seek to prioritize ethnic identity to the point of exclusion.

(3b) Since they didn't have a right to create such a state, the statehood should be normalized, and I would recommend that a single state is formed called 'Palestine' and that every Israeli citizen is, of course, allowed to remain, and never face any kind of expulsion.

I think then that the key thing to do would be to work as hard as possible to make Palestinians & Israelis live together as equals and work on eliminating economic differences.

This would even involve trying to elevate the status of women and completely secularize Palestinian leadership.

(4a) You can get Japanese or Korean citizenship and be legally recognized as such, but I think nobody thinks you are authentically Korean or Japanese. They may praise you for your knowledge, they may call you honorary Korean, and they may even fully concede that you speak their language and know their customs better than they themselves...

They will even let you marry their daughter.

But you will never be a Korean/Japanese to most of them, even some of the most liberal among them, because you simply fail to satisfy the definition. If you insist that you have become one because of your citizenship status, you might even get a very cheeky smile - the surest sign that you are NOT a Korean is not even understanding what Koreans consider to be Korean. Dissenting on this issue with Koreans brings you even further from fulfilling an impossible criteria.

(4b) I am curious if some amount of ethnic secular Jews also feel this way in regards to converts..? There's a significant amount of Jews who have very little exposure to the religion, and are surrounded by secular Jews, and so for them being Jewish is very much about the cultural identity of it... But, then again, even in these cases there are members of the family that I imagine had a religious phase or have been flirting hard with the religion, or simply those in the family that are taken in by the historical culture that even familiarize themselves with a lot of the religion in this endeavor, and this can fill in a lot of the blanks.

I would honeslty be sympathetic with a secular Jew who looked at a convert to Judaism with skepticism. Perhaps not a convert who spent their life in a largely Jewish community with a Jewish friend circle, or someone who married into a Jewish family, but some loose man or woman who suddenly felt the call and joined it... It would strike me as hard to ever be fully jewish through these means, unless they then proceeded to dive into a religious community. Even then, the experience of a secular Jew in the West, along with the baggage that can come with anti-semitism and growing up with a feeling of being differentiated from others, would seem to be an experience not unlike Blackness...

And thus I'd imagine that even the cradle secular Jew who looks like a Nordic and happens to have a last name like 'Marshall' has a very different experience than one who is born with stereotypical Jewish features and a last name like Goldberg that grew up in an area with friction points.

I am very interested in these aspects of culture & society. I spend tons of time picking the brains of Korean-Americans and Korean-Japanese on this beacuse the differences of opinion among them are astounding.

I imagine it is the exact same for being Jewish - there's a lot of ways to be Jewish, a lot of ways to view Judaism, and a lot of ways to have a lived Jewish experience. It is probably far more complicated than I will ever appreciate....

And so:

(5a) "Original sin" is a Christian concept, yes, because it is vital to our understanding of the human condition in ways that it is not vital for those of a Rabbinical Jewish tradition. But I would argue that it is not counter to classical Jewish theology.

I can sometimes be like a bull in a China shop, and I don't want to bark at Jews or Muslims about religious traditions and make things unpleasant...

I would also clarify that I believe more in what is called 'Ancestral Sin.'

Babies are not born with sin. Rather, the natural course of humans is to become sinful. We live in a fallen world. It's impossible to think of a human achieving moral perfection from the age of conscience to the day they die.

This is ultimately a result of the Fall, and part of the reason why God HImself comes to be the final sacrifice to purify the world and open us up to salvation.

You are both very smart guys - I hope we can have some theology discussions at some point because I think there is a lot to learn and I am always excited to share my perspective on these things...

(5b) I guess I would like to say as well that the Jewish tradition is fulfilled by Christ. All the Gentiles are untied to Israel through Christ. The new Israel is actually the Church, and at the very foundation of the Church is the original Jewish apostles & disciples in Jerusalem. Now, you might say, "C'mon, man, I am not a Christian and I am disinterested in you proselytizing at me," but let me conclude by simply observing that the Jews are foundational members of Christianity not just in terms of the Messiah, but in terms of the very first & strongest members of the Church.

It is not even until after Christ is crucified that we hear of a Gentile convert (the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts .

Thus it is very natural for us to view our history as shared, I think, and to even imagine that through the simple rules of "empire" and human nature, most southern European peoples (and many, many other Europeans - like Deutschmania) have at some point some Jewish ancestry... Which is too beautiful, because we want a part of the great Jewish heritage in us.

What Christian doesn't want to read the stories of Joshua and David and not think of themselves as being there - or the next best thing, to be descended from someone who was there..?

It is probably more useful to think of us as natural friends who have a shared history that is often tragic rather than people carrying on a competition.

There's more to be said but this is already so much text & I look like a fool for saying how busy I am and then investing this much time in a response, lol. Have a good one.

[Rich]

It is not even until after Christ is crucified that we hear of a Gentile convert (the Ethiopian Eunuch in Acts .

Acts is a highly tendentious document written decades after the first Jewish - Roman war. Its aim is not accurate history, but theological to subordinate Paul to the Jerusalem Church. Paul had a conversion experience, probably in Damascus, not on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus. Paul's blindness is another fabrication of Acts. Paul is quite clear that he received his Gospel through revelation / appearances not from any living man. And after his conversion he did not go up to Jerusalem for a number of years.

When he did finally get round to going, his letters are not clear on the exact chronology, he went to negotiate as an apostolic equal, not as a humble student to learn from the people who supposedly had walked with Jesus some decades earlier. The unquestioning nature of Christians never ceases to amaze. For example not one Christian I've ever met, and I've met a few, ever seems to think its odd that in the whole of the New Testament, there is not a single word as to what happened to the Jerusalem Church during the war.

[ingliz]

I might be in the minority here but I believe if you fuck off to make a better life for yourself and it turns to shit your offspring can't come back 2,000 years later and pretend they have a claim on the old house you left behind all those years ago.

They just married Palestinian Muslims

Not Jews, then?

Are you saying these native Palestinian Jewish men, knowing the Law, willingly chose to make their children Muslims to save on paying taxes?

It doesn't show much commitment to their faith.

There is a special connection

Jews seem to be very thin on the ground in what is now Israel before the Great War.

Google is your friend:

Out of an estimated population of 318,000 (excluding the Bedouin tribes) Frankl, L. A., Nach Jerusalem!, Vol. 2 (Leipzig, 1858), p. 500, gives the number of the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine as 10,639 in the mid-1850s

Thomson, W. M., The Land and the Book (London, 1894), p. 167, estimated the Jewish population as 11,100 in the late 1850s (7,000 in Jerusalem, 2,000 in Safad, 1,500 in Tiberias and 600 in Hebron)

André Chouraqui, L'Alliance Israélite universelle et la renaissance juive contemporaine (1860–1960) (Paris, 1965), p. 451. In a report to the Alliance Israélite Universelle dated 25/12/1868, Netter estimated the Jewish population of Palestine at 13,000, of which 9/10 lived in the four “Holy Cities”.

[Rich]

I might be in the minority here but I believe if you fuck off to make a better life for yourself and it turns to shit your offspring can't come back 2,000 years later and pretend they have a claim on the old house you left behind all those years ago.

Yes in addition the people returning are very far from 100% descended from the inhabitants of say 66AD, and the people being displaced or forced into bantustans are often very far from 0 percent descended from the inhabitants of 66AD. And then there's the arbitrariness of the dates. Many people lived in the area before this time and over the first millenium BC many of the people who identified as Israelite's / Judeans or followed some version of the Torah ceased identify as such and converted.

The whole right of Judeans is really an absurd concept historically. Normally the right to return is limited to the first generation of children of those who left. That's a sensible principle.

[Pants-of-dog]

As I said, maybe the protestors have some valid points, i dunno.

That is what this thread is about.

The rest of your post seems to be telling me about your feelings about them and me.

May I suggest that you stick to the topic and eschew commenting on people as individuals?

Or, if you want, do you think it is correct of me to dismiss your arguments simply because I think that you support ongoing genocides? I think that would be illogical. Do you think that would be illogical of me?

[wat0n]

Well, @Pants-of-dog is in fact dismissing the evidence of harassment of Jewish students for no reason at all but his feelings.

By the way, this thread is about the behavior of protesters, which in turn allows us to infer their actual and not simply their stated motivations.

I might be in the minority here but I believe if you fuck off to make a better life for yourself and it turns to shit your offspring can't come back 2,000 years later and pretend they have a claim on the old house you left behind all those years ago.

If you are kicked out, you're not doing any of that. You're just being expelled.

Furthermore, Jews did not claim any specific houses based on their connection to the land. They would buy the land regardless, not just take it, as proven by historical record.

Not Jews, then?

Are you saying these native Palestinian Jewish men, knowing the Law, willingly chose to make their children Muslims to save on paying taxes?

It doesn't show much commitment to their faith.

Sure. What's your point?

Conversion to avoid persecution and even taxation has always happened.

[ingliz]

They would buy the land

Bollocks!

They had bought 5% of Palestine by 1947 and now, in 2024, have complete control of 80% of Palestine with the rest being held under varying degrees of autonomy by the PA, but subject to Israeli military incursions any time the IDF pleases.

[wat0n]

Bollocks!

They had bought 5% of Palestine by 1947 and now, in 2024, have complete control of 80% of Palestine with the rest being held under varying degrees of autonomy by the PA, but subject to Israeli military incursions any time the IDF pleases.

What happened in 1947 and 1948 that led to this situation?

Starting a war was not such a great idea, was it?

[Pants-of-dog]

I am so glad that the critics of protesters have admitted that their accusations of antisemitism are based on inference and are inconsistent with the stated principles of the protesters.

The definition of antisemitism is expanding in the USA.

Now, NYU has expanded the definition to explicitly include anti-Zionism.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/nyu-s ... activities.

[wat0n]

Their stated principles are contradictory too, given they also chant to repeat October 7 10,000 times.

I was just using a very charitable interpretation of them, @Pants-of-dog.

[Pants-of-dog]

According to the new NYU regulations, one does not even need to infer things from chants anymore.

The mere act of criticizing Zionist projects in any way can now be construed as antisemitism.

[wat0n]

@Pants-of-dog quote NYU's regulations.

(3a) Jews do not have a right to create a new state on top of a native population in Israel. I can imagine a scenario where people settle a place without any ancestral claim to the land, some place like Idaho or Guyana, where the population density is low and other claims are weak or can both be (a) easily bought off and absorbed justly, and (b) have native people there already not enshrined by some government reflective of their interests... And there, in Montana or Suriname, you can exercise some kind of mandate for a new state that exists for a specific ethnic group.

The Japanese, the Koreans, the Finns - they get away with this because they have already had their ethnogenesis and do not need to shit on any intruders, though arguably some of the Korean servile class were actually descended from Khitans and were foreigners...

... And even then! Even then! Koreans & Japanese, just like the Swedes and the Dutch, experience great pressure to be more open to foreigners, to take in refugees, to ease their ethnic nationalism.

I am quite critical of that, as I want to see their countries remain 90%+ Korean/Japanese and retain their unique identities, but I also equally oppose authoritarianism and totalizing ideologies that seek to prioritize ethnic identity to the point of exclusion.

Well, had the bipartition been upheld I don't think it would be fair or accurate to say that the creation of either state would have been at the cost of disenfranchising anyone. It's also the point of the 2SS.

(3b) Since they didn't have a right to create such a state, the statehood should be normalized, and I would recommend that a single state is formed called 'Palestine' and that every Israeli citizen is, of course, allowed to remain, and never face any kind of expulsion.

I think then that the key thing to do would be to work as hard as possible to make Palestinians & Israelis live together as equals and work on eliminating economic differences.

This would even involve trying to elevate the status of women and completely secularize Palestinian leadership.

I don't think you can or should try to impose a character of the state in either side. If majorities of both populations don't share your vision, it just won't work.

If I were Palestinian I would very much prefer a secular democratic Palestinian state, that may or may not identify as an Arab state but which does not try to forcibly assimilate non-Arabs like it happens in neighboring Syria (for instance). As non-Palestinian, I would advice them to aim for this.

Yet not only I'm not Palestinian but in any event it's clear to me this is just not going to happen. The realistic solution is for Palestine to be like Egypt, aspiring to be like Turkey at best.

Israel is a more complicated case, since there are no examples it can look at. And it seems to me there is no consensus even on what it means, exactly, for Israel to be a Jewish state.

(4a) You can get Japanese or Korean citizenship and be legally recognized as such, but I think nobody thinks you are authentically Korean or Japanese. They may praise you for your knowledge, they may call you honorary Korean, and they may even fully concede that you speak their language and know their customs better than they themselves...

They will even let you marry their daughter.

But you will never be a Korean/Japanese to most of them, even some of the most liberal among them, because you simply fail to satisfy the definition. If you insist that you have become one because of your citizenship status, you might even get a very cheeky smile - the surest sign that you are NOT a Korean is not even understanding what Koreans consider to be Korean. Dissenting on this issue with Koreans brings you even further from fulfilling an impossible criteria.

(4b) I am curious if some amount of ethnic secular Jews also feel this way in regards to converts..? There's a significant amount of Jews who have very little exposure to the religion, and are surrounded by secular Jews, and so for them being Jewish is very much about the cultural identity of it... But, then again, even in these cases there are members of the family that I imagine had a religious phase or have been flirting hard with the religion, or simply those in the family that are taken in by the historical culture that even familiarize themselves with a lot of the religion in this endeavor, and this can fill in a lot of the blanks.

I would honeslty be sympathetic with a secular Jew who looked at a convert to Judaism with skepticism. Perhaps not a convert who spent their life in a largely Jewish community with a Jewish friend circle, or someone who married into a Jewish family, but some loose man or woman who suddenly felt the call and joined it... It would strike me as hard to ever be fully jewish through these means, unless they then proceeded to dive into a religious community. Even then, the experience of a secular Jew in the West, along with the baggage that can come with anti-semitism and growing up with a feeling of being differentiated from others, would seem to be an experience not unlike Blackness...

And thus I'd imagine that even the cradle secular Jew who looks like a Nordic and happens to have a last name like 'Marshall' has a very different experience than one who is born with stereotypical Jewish features and a last name like Goldberg that grew up in an area with friction points.

I am very interested in these aspects of culture & society. I spend tons of time picking the brains of Korean-Americans and Korean-Japanese on this beacuse the differences of opinion among them are astounding.

I imagine it is the exact same for being Jewish - there's a lot of ways to be Jewish, a lot of ways to view Judaism, and a lot of ways to have a lived Jewish experience. It is probably far more complicated than I will ever appreciate....

You can find all sorts of views. The only real consensus, though, is that Jews do not seek to convert people or spread the culture, and there is a diversity of views about those who willingly adopt it.

Some Jews react with skepticism, others embrace them completely, others sit somewhere in the middle. Personally, I've seen some who convert and become very religious/hardline and I have trouble understanding that but then again I'm fully secular but I otherwise don't see anything wrong with converts as long as it's voluntary and FWIW I think it's better this is not the result of active proselytism.

Furthermore, I also believe that we should not push our Jewishness on our children but then again my view may be unusual since I'm from a mixed family already. I think that, if my children prefer not to be religious or even identify as Jewish at all, I may not like it yet it is their right to and they will have their reasons. If Jewish culture can't be appealing on its own, without constantly shoving it in our throats (or actively seeking converts) then there's a reason for it. Culture and religion need to evolve just like most ideas do.

And so:

(5a) "Original sin" is a Christian concept, yes, because it is vital to our understanding of the human condition in ways that it is not vital for those of a Rabbinical Jewish tradition. But I would argue that it is not counter to classical Jewish theology.

I can sometimes be like a bull in a China shop, and I don't want to bark at Jews or Muslims about religious traditions and make things unpleasant...

I would also clarify that I believe more in what is called 'Ancestral Sin.'

Babies are not born with sin. Rather, the natural course of humans is to become sinful. We live in a fallen world. It's impossible to think of a human achieving moral perfection from the age of conscience to the day they die.

This is ultimately a result of the Fall, and part of the reason why God HImself comes to be the final sacrifice to purify the world and open us up to salvation.

You are both very smart guys - I hope we can have some theology discussions at some point because I think there is a lot to learn and I am always excited to share my perspective on these things...

This is an interesting topic indeed, and a complicated one too (perhaps for the Spirituality subforum or the thread there). I agree most people can indeed become evil over time but I'd say the Book of Genesis suggests quite clearly at least some humans won't. After all, if this wasn't the case, God would have never commanded Noah to build the Ark to begin with and humanity would have been destroyed. The moral of that story is that not only humans are able to resist evil, even if few of them succeed, but also that we are not responsible for the sins our parents committed since Noah's story takes places several generations after Adam and Eve are casted out of Paradise. Furthermore, this does not seem to be a divine attribute since it is God who contacts Noah, which at least I interpret as meaning this resistance to commit evil is indeed something Noah is able to do on his own without needing to be coerced to do so.

It also teaches us that, since most humans indeed fell to evil, we should probably not assume we're not one of them yet we also can't just assume others will. I do not doubt for a second I am personally able to commit evil deeds, and maybe I have (can we honestly judge ourselves?), but I am not so quick to assume others have done so even if they also probably have it in them. In a way, it is a good way to teach against the moral grandstanding that is so common nowadays.

[Pants-of-dog]

One of the arguments being made against the new NYU regulations is that it conflates an ethno-nationalist movement with an ethnic identity.

From the previous link:

NYU’s chapter of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine decried the university’s updated harassment policy in a Sunday press release, arguing the policy “equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people.”

“The new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group’s understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections,” NYU FSJP said. “This is a disturbing development that will legitimize far-right and ethnonationalist ideologies under the guise of protecting students from racial discrimination.”