Talk:Jewish identity

Merge proposal

Please see the discussion here. ← Michael Safyan 03:18, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Untitled comment

I am confused by why this article exists:

1. The article on Jewish identity is Who is a Jew?, information should go there, unless there is a reason to fork the article.
2. There is consensus on who is a Jew. In fact, there are clear definitions, all of which are described in Who is a Jew?. That does not mean that there is not disagreement over some cases, but most are clear-cut. See the definition added to the main Jew article: Jews are (1) those who practice Judaism and who are descended from Jews (2) Those who converted to Judaism (3) those who do not practice Judaism, but are descended directly from Jews and identify historically and culturally with the Jewish community
3. The information presented does not back up the fact that there is no consensus about who is a Jew. In fact, it says that 94% of self-identified Jews are either religious Jews or descended of Jewish parents. The other 6% seems to include lapsed converts (who would still be considered Jewish) and people who may have not formally converted. In any case, this shows a nearly 95% confidence interval, and probably much more, around the consensus of who is a Jew in the United States, which probably has the most fluid community. The evidence does not support your point, so I have modified it.
4. This feels like a runaround. I have spent hundreds of paragraphs arguing with you (as have others) about this topic, and you go ahead and create a seperate article to propogate your view, rather than continuing the discussion

I don't want to redirect/delete until I understand what you are trying to do here, could you explain? --Goodoldpolonius2 06:18, 23 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I agree that the most useful information on this topic is found at Who is a Jew?. However, this article has the better name, as Wikipedia articles are supposed to have nouns rather than questions as their title. I would like to move Who is a Jew? to Jewish identity, but I'm not sure how to do that without losing Who is a Jew?'s history. --Angr 10:42, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

(a) I don't know what sort of discussion is going on here, but I don't see why there shouldn't be an article on Jewish identity: not "Who is a Jew according to which rabbi?", but "What is a Jew?" or "What am I?" (/"What is he?"/"What is she?"). The two articles could be merged, but they deal with non-identical questions.

(b) 94% of self-identified Jews either are religious or have at least one parent identified as Jewish by the respondent - this does not surprise me, but we have to keep in mind that this statistic (accurate or not) reflects in part the definitions used in the survey itself. Hasdrubal 22:58, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Mike6271 appears to be a vandal, I'm posting a warning on his talk page. He left this [1], search for Mike Church, including re-doing his vandalism. (Skalskal)

This article and Identity Politics

Any though of adding this topic to this article per Deborah Dash Moore, (no relation) American Jewish Identity Politics, University of Michigan Press, October 2008; Marla Brettschneider, Cornerstones of Peace: Jewish Identity, Politics, and Democratic Theory, Rutgers University Press, January 1996; or lots of articles and mentions of the topic that exist. Thanks. Carol Moore 04:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)Carolmooredc {talk}

This article doesn't seem to mention anything relevant to the Identity politics article, and, as you've admitted, you haven't read either of those books, so it's not clear how they're relevant either. Jayjg ^(talk) 05:35, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Merge

See here —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 21:45, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

The link is broken now. Jarble (talk) 00:39, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Antisemitism and jewish identity

How does "Many Jews in the Jewish diaspora have suffered persecution. They were landless and suffered periodic massacres, expulsions and other abuses." tell us anything about jewish identity? 46.7.236.155 (talk) 21:03, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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I propose merging Who is a Jew? into this article for several reasons. The first (and one with a relatively easy fix) is that the use of questions or rhetorical devices is generally deprecated in Wikipedia article titles. Moreover, the structure of this article is more accommodating of the introduction of an influx of content, particularly that contained on the Who is a Jew? article, primarily because this article is wider in scope and the content contained within the other article could rather logically be subsumed into it. There seems to be little reason why one specific element of Jewish identity have a dedicated Wikipedia article when it is largely useless outside the context of Jewish identity and the concept of Jewish identity necessarily incorporates the question of who a Jew is. Therefore, it is quite sound that Who is a Jew? be merged into Jewish identity. Ergo Sum 02:54, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose If there isn't, there ought to be a list of perennial losing AfD, RfC and merger proposals. This one would belong toward the top of such a list. It has been discussed and rejected in 2005, again in 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009 (although the suggestion in that year was to merge Who is a Jew? into Jew), again in 2009, once again in 2009, and 2010.
  I now see there is such a list, WP:Perennial proposals, but this dispute is probably too parochial for inclusion there. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 04:32, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm really not sure "rejected" is a fair characterization of those discussions (which seem to have occurred at least 6 years ago, a lifetime in Wikipedia in terms of policy). I'd say no strong consensus developed, and all had few participants. None cited policy or reliable sources supporting this very odd naming convention, from what I can tell either. I think an RfC might make sense here to get some more neutral voices. FuriouslySerene (talk) 17:15, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

• Comment, but certainly not an oppose: After reading over the articles in question, and the past debates over the issue, I think this proposal needs a more nuanced response than just Support or Oppose. This problem is that there are two quite separate and distinct issues that are documented in these two articles: first, the issue of Jewish identity in general, and second the Israeli legal issue about "Who is a Jew". As far as I know - and as far as I could find out - the expression "Who is a Jew" was never used prior to the early 1950s, when a legal definition of Jew was necessary for specific Israeli laws (notably the Law of Return and the Law of Religious Services (1971)). This is not to say that there were not efforts to define objective criteria for inclusion in the Jewish religion or community prior to 1951, just that these efforts were never referred to as "Who is a Jew".

I therefore think it appropriate, not to merge the articles, but to rearrange them, so that the article Jewish Identity discusses the historical, social and religious definitions of Jewishness, and the article Who is a Jew discusses the legal debate in Israel, as well as the political and social ramifications of that debate.

Of course, this is work, and, while I am making the suggestion, I am not volunteering. I did that once recently (at the Jewish nose) and made a lot of enemies, so I won't be doing anything like that for a while. Ravpapa (talk) 07:06, 16 July 2016 (UTC)

• Oppose We have been here before. This is a notable topic in its own right. That said, I can agree with Ravpapa that perhaps these articles could be streamlined. Debresser (talk) 18:04, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Comment (and implicit support) There's no denying that this issue has been raised in various forms before, but that speaks to the fact that numerous people have found problems with the current article structures, not that it is a settled matter. If, hypothetically, the best way to proceed were to move content concerning Jewish identity into that article and keep Who is a Jew focused on Israeli legal matters, then that would be a different article (one more appropriately titled Jewish legal identity or something to that effect). However, keeping two separate articles that address at least in substantial part the same topic is terribly inefficient. Ergo Sum 19:23, 16 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support I'm struggling to see why Who is a Jew? was chosen. It's entirely an unencyclopedic name and goes against WP naming conventions. I'm not seeing any reliable sources to support it either. To Ravpapa - while I think you make some good points, there already is Law of Return that deals with Israeli definitions. It can be expanded if you think there should be more discussion about certain elements. These two articles are clearly overlapping, and the "Jewish identity" name makes much more sense. FuriouslySerene (talk) 17:10, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
• Support The title of this article does not adhere to Wikipedia's article title conventions. It's effectively asking the reader a question. There are hundreds of identities that one could think of. Those identities are described in articles with reputable and widely known title subjects. "Jewish identity" encompasses "Who is a Jew?" perfectly well. The template/s that link "Who is a Jew?" could even keep the phrase, while properly linking to "Jewish identity". Andrew. Z. Colvin • Talk 02:14, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
• Support - both clearly overlap. In addition we have too many articles on the same topic also including Jews, Who is a Jew?, Conversion to Judaism, Jewish peoplehood, Judaism, Jewish culture, etc.GreyShark (dibra) 14:32, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
• Support - the title Who is a Jew? can be construed as being deprecatory of non-Jews. At the Jews as the chosen people article I find "Some people have claimed that Judaism's chosen people concept is racist because it implies that Jews are superior to non-Jews." It is not necessarily "chosenness" per se under consideration at the Who is a Jew? article, but it is a related concept. The Who is a Jew? article explores the limitations of Jewish membership. Employing a title such as Who is a Jew? exacerbates a notion of exclusivity sometimes associated with Jews that can be misconstrued as being racist. There is no need to raise the specter of Jewish racism because "Jewish identity" adequately serves the purpose of titling an article that explores the limitations of Jewish membership. Bus stop (talk) 04:09, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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