But that is invoking a non-Jewish standard of "Jewishness" (and I speak as someone intensely exasperated by refusal to acknowledge any distinction between "ethnic" and "religious" Jewishness.*) Someone can say "I spit on G_d, I spit on Torah, I spit on halakhah."; He can spend Sabbath behind a desk, and never have seen the inside of a synagogue. No one will say "You aren't Jewish'. All that matters is who his mother was. And yes, I am acutely aware of the cognitive dissonance in play when as soon as someone says "I believe in Jesus", it suddenly ceases to matter who his mother was (and the israeli courts will say so officially in applying the Law of Return.)
(* not to mention the frustration of being "Jewish" enough for any real anti-Semites, but not for "the" Jews.)
(* not to mention the frustration of being "Jewish" enough for any real anti-Semites, but not for "the" Jews.)
The difficulty is that newborn males aren’t Jewish in the sense of actually believing in the Jewish religion – they are, after all, newborns.
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