<DIV>That was really addressed to Bill, who seemed more inclined to refute the notion that there are Jews than to understand who is Jewish. Neither religious belief nor cultural practice are necessary, and in fact neither of them are sufficient by conventional standards. Some Jews might think otherwise. My own "Humanistic" (atheist) congregation might accept someone with a pretty minimal amount of conversion, and it's not clear to me that what Beth Or does counts as "religious" belief, although it looks to me (raised in Reform Judaism) like Reform Judaism without God. The Orthodox, that's another story. They would regard me as Jewish only in virtue of the fact that I am matrilineally descended through people who, 100 or so years ago, were probably Orthodox like them.  jks joanna bujes <joanna.bujes@sun.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">At 11:46 AM 05/01/2003 -0700, you wrote: > But the long and short of it is that you have try to understand it. Of > course you can dismiss it as as a lot of superstitious claptrap, but then > you will miss the opportunity to try to understand phenomena that are > real and imporatnt, if not ruled by formal logic. I did not dismiss it as superstitious claptrap, nor did I address myself to the issue of conversion -- just to the issue of what would constitute "proof" of Jewishness as determined by blood. And this does not involve either religious belief or cultural practice. If I'm wrong, I wait to be corrected. Joanna ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><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.