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TIL the term "Semite" refers to both Jews and Arabs collectively.
@freemo Really? So, by that logic, Islamophobia is antisemitic?
@LouisIngenthron Yup, sure is.
@freemo Hmm, interesting. So, I wonder what the more specific term would be. Antijudaic?
@LouisIngenthron Interestingly despite a semite including all speakers of a semetic language, including jews and arabs, in general practice antisemite refers exclusively to jews... very confusing I know.
@freemo @LouisIngenthron I have never understood this. It gets more confusing when the Ashkenazi are Mediterranean Greek ancestry, and not Semitic. I had someone try to explain how "jewish" was both an ethnicity and a religion once, but the argument seemed to revolve around ignoring testable objective reality.
@JonKramer @freemo It's a common argument. Even the Wikipedia page calls the Jewish people an "ethnoreligious" group.
@LouisIngenthron @freemo , yes, it seems to be common. My confusion is why it's common, but only for Jewish peoples. There has to be some historic reason that just stuck, but since the whole silly history of the theory of different races is fairly new, it doesn't seem to have had time to stick.
It would seem its common among muslims as well.. I have often seen muslims as being referred to as an ethnic group as well.
@freemo @JonKramer Hindus and Buddhists as well. Many religions are closely intertwined with ethnic groups.
@LouisIngenthron @freemo , No argument with Hindus and Buddhists. But how do a bunch of ethnic Greeks call themselves middle eastern Semitic people? That makes as much sense to me as a bunch of Irish guys suddenly deciding they are Sub-Saharan Africans.
@JonKramer @freemo In the modern sense, while ethnoreligious groups were founded on ethnic and religious commonalities, today, they seem to be more inclusive (i.e. either/or instead of both/and). "Jewish" can refer equally to a devout Hassidic Jew as it can to a nonbeliever with Jewish parents. The commonality these days is a shared cultural background. Back to the previous example, both the strictest practitioners and the non-practitioners can attend a Bar Mitzvah together and discuss matters with the same cultural context, despite their wide gulf in religious belief.
@LouisIngenthron @freemo , Absolutely. The common cultural background is unquestionably there, but the ethnic background isn't.
@JonKramer @freemo Sure it is. What do you think ethnic means?
@freemo @LouisIngenthron , my error, I intended to use the word "ethnicity" not "ethnic"
That wouldnt change anything.. ethnicity is just the noun form of ethnic, it still refers to culture not race.
@freemo @LouisIngenthron , it is an interesting side topic, and this is a good place to read more, but my reference was for genetics, not shared love of types of music, clothing, or foods.
Better to use the word race then... what you are really asking is why are jews often considered a race and not just a religion?
I think its complicated.. a **lot** of jews have shared racial origins, but being a displaced people those origins are fuzzy.. whey have fled and integrated and thus have a much more diverse racial background than many. Its probably better to say they are a collection of races that become isolated and displaced so while still having a lot of racial commonality there is also a huge amount of racial diversity.
In short, Jews mostly refuse to give up their racial identity entierly despite being displaced since anctient times
@freemo @LouisIngenthron I intentionally tried to avoid the word "race", since as I previously noted, the word is a recent creation designed to create a hierarchy of fitness of the different genetic groups. A hierarchy that I think objectively does not exist, and can not exist.
Whether talking abpit race is important or not is questionable, doesnt change the fact that you were talking about race just trying to call it something its not. If your talking genetic insularity, you are talking about race. Science avoids race because its problematic, but it does recognize its a concept with some relevance (like determining prevelance to certain diseases).
@freemo @LouisIngenthron , The Online Etymology Dictionary uses this: "In 19c. also "a group regarded as forming a distinctive ethnic stock" (German, Greeks, etc.). "
Note the use of the term "ethnic". We are talking about words that have very little scientific meaning, but have emotional roots in overt racism, which by default, I try to avoid.
I assure you, I understand the root words, the basic concepts, how it is used in science, the implications when it comes to genetic disease, etc. My error was using "ethnic background" when I meant "ethnicity" because I was not attempting to discuss social behavior identification, but genetics. I assure you I was intentionally NOT talking about 'race.' My point was that there seems to be very limited examples of other disparate genetic groups that attempt to identify with a single genetic group based on a shared religion of part of that original genetic group.
Ethnic refers to groups with common cultures, which generally means tight knit German for example can refer to ethnic germans, racial germans, or people of German nationality.. in this case they clearly point out they are talking about ethinic germans (shared culture) not racial.
@freemo @JonKramer Right, but those variations of "german" are all still considered different words, hence your difference in capitalization.
As I understand it, though, the term "Jewish" refers to *both* those who are of the culture *and* those who are of the faith simultaneously. Hence, "ethno-religious" group.
@LouisIngenthron Yes, but you have to keep in mind from the perspective of most jews (I live in Israel for a year now, so just my impresion) the religion is the culture.. Even people who are not religious jews will follow most of the religious traditions... So even for them in practice their religion and their ethnicity are almost the same thing.
@freemo I haven't been to Israel, so I certainly can't speak to that, but over here, it's more of an identity than a religion. It can almost be boiled down to "which holiday do you celebrate in December?"
I.e. Even as a full-on atheist, I still celebrate some of the Christian holidays because of culture rather than religion. And many of the non-practicing Jewish folks I know are the same way. They don't ever go to temple, but they still go to mitzvahs and weddings.
@LouisIngenthron christiaanity is just as much a ethnoreligion as jews are.. in fact you just described it:
> I.e. Even as a full-on atheist, I still celebrate some of the Christian holidays because of culture
You are ethnically christian, but your "religion" is atheist (or lack of a religion).
@toiletpaper @freemo @LouisIngenthron This is a very interesting thread to read 
@freemo In some ways, yes. But I think there's a big difference in that Christianity is much more aggressive about converting people of different ethnicities than Judaism is.
So, while the Jewish people do have subsets (like the Ashkenazi), it's nowhere near as diverse in culture as Christianity is (mostly because of just how far Christian missionaries will go to convert very foreign people).
For example, pretty much everyone who celebrates Hanukkah does so with roughly the same rituals, right?
Contrast that against this page on Wikipedia with how differently people celebrate Christianity's prime holiday by country:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observance_of_Christmas_by_country