Oh, I do care about you. Each person, as my rabbis tell me, is a complete world. I just don’t care for a person who squanders his intellectual gifts on false sophistry.

It seems to me analogous to those Jews as an accident of birth-much discussed on HP-who only identify as Jews in the context of I-P, their views entirely a reflection of their core belief in left wing politics. In this case, Yese on the basis of a Jewish mother (?) is speaking “asajew” but with his position wholly informed by his Protestant Christian religion.

some points:

1. I don’t think my Jewish ’status’ gives my arguments more or less gravitas.
2. No-one denies the Jewish identity of anti-Zionist Jews.
3. I haven’t used the words “as a Jew.”
4. I’m not treating my Jewishness as an “accident of birth”. If I were, then I wouldn’t identify as Jewish.

Yeze, I’ve been around a long time. I know you don’t really care about Nachmanides and the mediaeval Yemenite seder tefilah. You didn’t argue yourself into a belief in Jesus, and I don’t suppose that you could be argued out of it – presuming that anyone cared to.

JoeInAustralia, I know you really don’t care about me, so why are you commenting about my beliefs and actions, according to your own logic?

Jewish identity over the last 300 years, in Europe has been complicated due the dispersion of a tribe with an ancient and particular set of beliefs and practices and the response of members of that tribe to the pressures of modernity.

Now that we are reconstituted as a cultural majority in the State of Israel and given the fact that our basic belief is to argue with each other and God (whether he or she exists is immaterial), then it is no wonder that we do not fit into all sorts of binary yes/no definitions.

The boundaries of being a Jew today are very fluid, but I think that accepting Christianity puts you over them mainly for painful historical reasons.

A more interesting question is why this is so and why formally the “asaJews” oft mentioned on this site supporting my political/cultural/physical enemies are not automatically assigned the same ex Jewish status?

Sure, but Yese is, in fact, a Jew.”

It seems to me analogous to those Jews as an accident of birth-much discussed on HP-who only identify as Jews in the context of I-P, their views entirely a reflection of their core belief in left wing politics. In this case, Yese on the basis of a Jewish mother (?) is speaking “asajew” but with his position wholly informed by his Protestant Christian religion.

He does not seem to understand why most other Jews do not welcome him with open arms.

B

Why should anyone here try to persuade Yeze to change his beliefs? It would show a marked lack of respect for him to try to do so. I’d just like to see some reciprocal respect in the opposite direction.

You have tried to change my beliefs, repeatedly, about the rights of Messianic Jews to make aliyah to Israel. I am not the least bit offended by your attempts to persuade me.

As far as I understand, until Judea was conquered by the Greek Empire, Judaism was a procelytizing faith. I think it was Alexander the Great who prohibited such activities by Jews.

My first recollection of Lubavitcher activities in Toronto was a probably in the mid-1990s, and they weren’t seeking non-Jews as prospects, but rather trying to promote Lubavitcher-style observance among the non-Lubavitcher members of the tribe. Much more recently, I have heard about men who aren’t Jewish being invited to tie on t’fillin, which I found rather surprising, although I don’t know if there is any prohibition against a non-Jewish male doing so.

America’s superiority over England is certainly not aesthetic. Maybe dentally.