JEWS

[Hikky]

Being A jewish person, let me clarify a few things.
-jewish people are simply people who were born to jewish parents. though there a few arguments among jews about it, it's generally preceived that jews are ones who were born to a jewish mother(becuase she is the birth giver) and not the opposite. "becoming" a jew is impossible since it's an ethnic heritage, but there is a way to convert to judaism(though it's really mentally painful and most men whouldn't want their "thing" cut off)
-Israel has the largest jewish population in the world. ^^
-krs2snow, you pretty much said it all, except for one thing, i don't believe in "politically correctness", it's pretty much cover-up what's really inside and not actually solving the problem.

 

[rado31]

You guys generalise way too much.

Oh yeah, and the british people think that they are kinda special : P

 

[kyle]

"becoming" a jew is impossible since it's an ethnic heritage, but there is a way to convert to judaism(though it's really mentally painful and most men whouldn't want their "thing" cut off)

It's true that Jews discourage converion, but there are converts everywhere. I knew a guy who converted to Judiasm. There are about 100,000 Jewish Converts worldwide, but most convert because their marriage partner is Jewish.

-Israel has the largest jewish population in the world. ^^

Wow. I stand corrected. I was referring to stats that are about 8 years old. I see Israel has overtaken the USA in Jewish population, as the populaton of American Jews has shrunk.

World Jewish Population

1 Israel 5,313,800 40.6%
2 United States 5,275,000 40.3%
3 France 491,500 3.8%
4 Canada 373,500 2.9%
5 United Kingdom 297,000 2.3%
6 Russia 228,000 1.7%
7 Argentina 184,500 1.4%
8 Germany 118,000 0.9%
9 Australia 103,000 0.8%
10 Brazil 96,500 0.7%
11 Ukraine 80,000 0.6%
12 South Africa 72,000 0.6%
13 Hungary 49,700 0.4%
14 Mexico 39,800 0.3%
15 Belgium 31,200 0.2%


source: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/jewpop.html

 

[Hikky]

well, about the conversion thing, i know someone that tried that, but he quit.
i told him it's too painfull and humiliating, but he tried it anyways.
it's because the amount of stuff you need to do in order to get converted in israel is significantly higher and it's very humiliating.
it's because the fanatic orthodox religous rabbis took over the whole conversion thing. (at least here in israel)
i myself am against conversion, because most of the time it's just to please the bride's parents, or other reasons which are pretty silly.