Talk:Jewish ethnicity

Jewish ethnicity does not revolve only around religion. There are a lot of self-identified Jews who are atheists. Nationalism does not equal Zionism. In pre-war Europe the Jewish Bund party was a secular socialist group that promoted Jewish cultural autonomy within European nation states--i.e., the Jews would be recognized as a distinct ethnic minority, not based on religion. This was the same principle behind Lenin's Birobidzhan project. As for conversion, there were times when Judaism apparently did proselytize. Many important figures in Jewish history are converts or descended from converts, including two of the most outstanding figures of the Roman period Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Meir. Even today, all branches of Judaism accept converts, arguing only over what the standards should be for conversion. Danny 18:21 Feb 23, 2003 (UTC)

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I disagree with the redirect, although I will not undo it right now. I think all the articles about Jewish people, as well as the relations of Jews and Judaism to the non-Jewish world, would do better if there were more shorter articles.

Trying to amass as much as possible into several big article is not working for me. And all these redirects are just obscuring the issues.

If there is disagreement over whether "Zionism" is (or is not) a form of "Jewish ethnocentrism", then we need an article about that controversy, which I think we currently have.

Similarly, if the question of what "Jewish ethnicity" is, is an issue, than it should not be hidden in the Jew or Jewish article but broken out as an article of its own. Such a Jewish ethnicity article might be somewhat redundant, but redundancy is better than obscurity. --Uncle Ed 15:11 Mar 12, 2003 (UTC)