<DIV>There is no easy answer about what counts as proof of Jewish identity to different groups -- including Jews. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There is certainly no univocal answer. I don't think anyone here disagrees with you about Israeli policy. Nathan is, however, right than an initial important impulse behind Zionism ()and the RoR) was to give Jews a refuge from discrimination. Your comment goes to the means adopted to that end, which, one can say with a certain degree of understatement, have been troubling. jks joanna bujes <joanna.bujes@sun.com> wrote:</DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">At 02:54 PM 05/01/2003 -0700, you wrote: >But Justin's point is that there is no "proof". It all depends because >there is a complicated anthropology of the odd intersection of Jewishness as >race, Jewishness as religion, and Jewishness as culture. I wasn't speaking of metaphysical or logical proof. I was just referring to what would constitute proof to various different groups. My father was Jewish (it said so on his birth certificate) my mother was Greek Orthodox. If I had lived in Germany in WWII, I would have been a lampshade. If my father had emigrated to Israel when we left Romania, I might have gotten spat on and, certainly, the parents of potential Jewish boyfriends would have nixed me from the get go. In my 98% jewish high school in LA, this is indeed what happened. To some christians in Romania, I was a "dirty jew." > The Right of Return is as much about saving people from >discrimination based on an external definition of Jewishness that is >separate from internal Jewish definitions of Jewishness. If you want to save people from discrimination, you fight against discrimination. Period. You don't drive 3/4 of the population of an entire country out, steal their land and their property and then continue to terrorize the ones who remain. Joanna ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</BLOCKQUOTE><hr SIZE=1> Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://us.rd.yahoo.com/search/mailsig/*http://search.yahoo.com">The New Yahoo! Search</a> - Faster. Easier. Bingo.