On Wed, 18 Jul 2001, Max Sawicky wrote:
> Huh? I'm part of the race my parents were part of. But what race
> were my parents a part of? What race are "the Jewish people
> world-wide"? I'm sure few or no Jews speak of "the jewish race."
>
> A race is often something in your head, as I said before.
No, a race in this case is something defined by law, Max. Israeli law and biblical law. Under those laws, you're a Jew by descent if your mother was, and she is if her mother was, etc., no matter if you personally don't know a Masuza from a Mazda. You can tell by looking around Israel today that legal race clearly doesn't jibe with race in any biological sense. It's as clear as the looks on our faces that a lot of mingling went on in the diaspora. Its no accident that Moroccan Jews look like Moroccans and Bulgarian Jews look like Bulgarians. But the fact that racial laws are biological nonsense doesn't make them any less racial laws. The laws that defined race in American were nonsense in that sense too, dividing half brothers by race while uniting people in the south and north that came from different continents. They still meant business. In fact I'd go so far as to say that a racial law always has to be nonsense in the biological sense because race isn't a biological reality. But the law is still very much the law.
To be fair, it's old fashioned and polemical to use the word race in this context. Nobody talks about the German race anymore, or the Lithuanian race. They usually refer to persons belonging to a people or to a nationality, and the same is true in Israel. And remember that any prospective Palestinian state will also have a law of return. Most of us won't be moved to call them the Palestinian race on that account. The interchangeability of the terms race and legally defined descent was natural a hundred years ago. Most normal people don't talk that way today, either in Isarel or without.
But legally it's not wrong. "Jus Sanguinis" doesn't mean "the law of blood" for nothing. And if "Volk" can be translated in some contexts as race, than so can people.
If it cheers you up, you can call us an ethnic group. Although legally speaking, I'm not one of us :o)
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com