Logic, linguistics, and philosophy. Culture and politics
Jewish identity, continued
Jewish identity is such that you’re either “Jewish by birth” or “Jewish by choice.” The former is traditionally matrilineal: If your mother is Jewish, then you’re Jewish. You’re a born Jew. But some especially liberal sects of modern Judaism make an exception: Even if your mother isn’t Jewish, you’re Jewish as long as (a) your father is Jewish and (b) he raised you Jewish.
The traditional or prototypical Jew is a Jew born and raised: His father is Jewish, his mother is Jewish, and he’s raised Jewish and only Jewish. But there are plenty of variations: (a) There are people born Jewish but not raised Jewish. (b) There’s also the opposite: people raised Jewish but not born Jewish. Those are the aforementioned Jewish-father-raised, Jewish-motherless people accepted as Jewish in the especially liberal sects. (c) There are even Jews who were neither born nor raised Jewish. Those are the converts.
The converts. Conversion is akin to adoption. You’re “adopted” into the Jewish “extended family.” There are two problems with conversion: (a) It’s rare for people to truly internalize and bring into themselves at the deepest level a culture that they didn’t grow up with. And (b) you can convert to Judaism, yes, but you can’t convert your blood to, say, Ashkenazi blood. The Jews have been incredibly successful in religion, business, philosophy, and science, but thinking that converting to Judaism would give somebody without any Jewish blood the advantages of being Jewish would be akin to thinking that giving up a black baby for adoption to a rich white family would give the black baby the advantages of being white. Of course that would only give one side: the white-cultural advantages. Any white-biological advantages would stay closed to the child. And that analogy is about adoption at birth. Adoption as an adult is even less likely to give any kind of privilege or advantage. Imagine a 30-year-old black man who was raised in a poor black neighborhood being suddenly adopted into a rich white family. He may learn something, sure, and he may teach his adoptive family something as well. But ultimately adults just don’t change very much.
The Jews are by and large an extremely stubborn people because the modern-day Jews descend from countless generations of people who refused to convert to Christianity despite Jewish persecution. The Jews who converted out took their blood with them.
Anybody can say that they’re Jewish in the same way that anybody can say that they’re a native speaker of, say, Japanese. That’s because anybody of any race could conceivably be Jewish and anybody of any race could conceivably be a native speaker of Japanese (or of course of any language). There’s no way to disqualify somebody of either of those qualities by appearance only. There’s nevertheless prejudice or strong association with appearance: Some appearances (e.g., racially Japanese-passing, which is a subset of Northeast Asian) are rare among Jews in the same way that some appearances (e.g., white, black) are rare among native speakers of Japanese.
By contrast, it’s not the case that anybody can say that they’re, say, Northeast Asian, white, or black. Race isn’t something that you can convert into or learn. It’s set in stone at birth.