Are Jewish people BAME?

[novacaneforthepain]

I have looked this up and find so many different answers. Does anyone know for a fact?

Can I ask please if somebody born Jewish converted to a different religion would they then be Jewish by race but not religion - is that possible? If Jewish IS a race then what religion you practice makes no difference.
I know that when it has come to exterminating a Jewish people (Reconquest of Spain, Bloody Mary, Hitler etc) there has been no distinction but do Jewish people view themselves and others as a Jewish even if they have converted?
Genuine question, thanks to anyone who answers

A Jew will always be a Jew but won't necessarily be Jewish.

In this case Jewish is used as the religion and Jew as the ethnicity.

@MRex thank you 😊

Thank you Fressia

Hopping - conversions are quite rare nowadays, because you can just assimilate. In 19th century Europe there were a lot of people who converted away from Judaism in order to advance in society, because a lot of positions in universities and civil service were open open to Christians. So they might have converted away from Judaism but still felt an attachment to it.

It is forbidden to discriminate against converts to Judaism. I wouldn't even mention that someone is a convert unless they were open about it.

No idea, but I have read they are at similar risk for CV as BAME. Hassidic Jewish people maybe?

In this case Jewish is used as the religion and Jew as the ethnicity.

What, so you'd say "I have Jew blood", "my ethnicity is quarter Jew"?

To me, that sounds really pejorative. Is that really what people say?

IMO, that seems odd, especially as many of the people who'd be using this terminology would be people who don't practise Judaism as a religion (and have therefore dodged most (if not all) of the racial oppression experienced by Jewish people), and then are using a loaded term (which IMO connotes persecution of Jewish people by others) to describe that hidden feature of their own heritage.

Apologies if this offends anyone - I appreciate this is a massively complex issue and that there are heaps of dissenting views on defining 'Jewishness'. I'm genuinely trying to get my head around this so that I don't offend IRL (e.g. when talking about genetic risk factors), and fully accept I may be being really clumsy here.

I've heard people say I'm 50% a Jew (although it's not the way being said). Usually in that context yeah you would say I'm 50% Jewish.

When we're trying to separate ethnicity from religion is when we use Jew Vs Jewish. The PP mentioned the Jews forcedly converted by the Spanish Inquisition. Their name is Ben Anousim. There are many conversations about them in Israel regarding their status as Jews (as most of them won't have a direct maternal line) but for the sake of this discussion let's say they do. They'll definitely be Jews, but Jewish they won't be as they don't practice the religion.

www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/45132/jewish/What-Makes-a-Jew-Jewish.htm

Being Jewish, Christian, Muslim etc doesn't make you BAME.

It is your ethnicity and not faith that matters.

One Jewish person might be and another might not be.

Cabbageking, read the thread. Jewish is an ethnic group, recognised as such in British Law.

Thanks @Fressia123, that makes sense.

Jewish is an ethnic group

So if you're dad is Jewish and your mum isn't are you Jewish. I always thought not but maybe I'm wrong now?

Depends on the denomination @floatyboat

Hassidic/Orthodox won't accept it.

Conservative/Masorti sometimes do

Liberal/Reform will say it doesn't matter if it's matrilineal or patrilineal

liberal/Reform might also say that you need to have been brought up Jewish in some way, whereas the Orthodox would accept you as Jewish if your mother or maternal grandmother was Jewish, even if you hadn't been brought up in another religion.

@sam
@Fressia123

But that answer implies Jewish is a religion/culture/custom rather than ethnic group so that can't be right.

@Floatyboat even if it doesn’t seem right to you that is how it is.

@Onceuponatimethen

I don't understand what you mean. Some people are saying Jewish is an ethnic group (or I'm quarter Jewish etc) and some people are saying it is determined by whether your mother was Jewish or whether you were brought up in a particular way. How can it be all of that at the same time?

@Floatyboat, the question asked in the first place ‘are Jewish people BAME?’ doesn’t have a simple yes/no answer, which is why the op raised it.

Similarly, neither does the question who is considered Jewish. That will differ according to people’s own views of themselves eg I know someone who is ethnically 100% Jewish with two Jewish parents buy who doesn’t really identify Jewishness as a big part of them. That is their right. Conversely, my ex DH has a Jewish father but my ex’s Jewishness is a huge part of his identity.

Different Jewish denominations have different ideas on what is sufficient to mean a person is Jewish.

“But who doesn’t really identify” I meant

For the purpose of any genetic risk factors (COVID or otherwise), though, science won't care which parent your DNA came from or how devoted you are to religion.

Absolutely @LonginesPrime but understanding the composition of a group will enable an understanding of the risk to those in the group.

Eg if I converted last week but all my recent ancestors were Caucasian then Jewish or not there would be no increased risk to me

However (eg) my dbro has A blood type and comes from partly Sephardic Jewish background, so potentially at some increased risk (who knows) even though he wouldn’t be classed as Jewish by an orthodox definition.

I’m not Jewish but half of my family are and I have Jesus ancestry. All of my grandad’s family were killed in the holocaust and that has directly affected my mum’s life.
I don’t refer to myself as BAME or mixed race, and yet I have felt very hurt when I have heard things that are antisemitic or ‘Jew jokes’ as my family history is marred with pain and discrimination. As a white person who is not a Jew myself I still feel the hurt of this and would always challenge it if I heard it.

Jewish not Jesus - what an odd autocorrect sorry!

Why do alphabet soup labels matter to people?

I am not religious but I am 100% Jewish by ‘blood’, or genetically if you prefer. There is some debate over whether one can tell whether you are a Jew by genetic testing, but many think you can. There are also genetic conditions such as Tay Sachs syndrome which are quite prevalent among Ashkenazi Jews.

If I want to know my Covid risk, I am interested in the risk to Jewish (by ethnicity) people as opposed to BAME, which tells me nothing about my own personal risk.

It is also interesting to wonder whether Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews have similar genetics (and risks). I certainly look different from my Sephardi friends. However, apparently they have much genetically in common.

@larry I think there are genetic similarities between Ashkenazi and Sephardi but I'm not so sure exactly how close we are. On 23andme I only appear as 15% Ashkenazi when I'm Sephardi. Interestingly enough my children are carriers of Familial Mediterranean Fever known to be common in Sephardic backgrounds.