Yeah, Ok fine. Now explain how blacks and Asians and Caucasians can be jews. Most jews are of Arabic decent, just as most muslims are of Arabic decent.
I don't understand why we want to call every demographic a race. Hispanic is not a race, muslim is not a race, Christian is not a race.
Not quite correct. There are two separate groups. There is the group of people who follow a religion. Then there is a group of people who are of a certain ethnic origin. The Jewish race overlaps considerably with the Jewish religion. It is not necessary for a person to belong to one in order to belong to another and you are quite correct to point out that one can practice the Jewish faith without being a member of the ethnic group. However the cultural aspects of each tend to result in full assimilation, given successive generations. It is equally a mistake to not recognize that there is a distinct ethnic Jewish ethnic group, having mutual common origins.
Jewish ethnicity is unique in modern times, in that the group has successfully preserved the cultural identifications of being generally aligned to a specific religion over thousands of years. While this may seem incomprehensible in comparison to modern day standards, it was very much the norm in ancient times.
In ancient times the identity of a nation tended to encompassed ethnic, religious, cultural, language, and geographic aspects. A nation of people included those that shared commonalities in these categories. The ancient Greeks had a specific religion. Even though the Greek city-states were independently sovereign, at times even warring with each other, they still were a single nation; their inner feuds were often set aside easily to face off external invasions of mother Greece. The history of ancient conquest often involved attempts to impress the conquering nation's culture upon the conquered, with the free exercise of religion being a means by which to do so. Of course, the degree to which this occurred, or was effective, was often influenced by characteristic traits of the culture, as well as a ruler's strategic attempts to maintain control of an empire through the exercise of power balanced with concessions to placate locals. For example, Darius the Great demonstrated great tolerance for conquered peoples to practice their native religions, and in doing so tended to win over the support of his conquered subjects; Darius (following the example of his dynastic predecessors) essentially traded religious freedom for the people's acquiescence to the many other policies that he implemented which united the Persian Empire (such as establishing Aramaic as the official language of the empire).
It is from this world that the Israelite nation arose. National Israelite identity pre-dated political identity. The primary cultural ties that bound were enforced through religious prescribements. With time the Israelite nation grew and rose to prominence, even without the existence of a formal state. This fact is remembered even today as the "Twelve tribes of Israel." From tribal chiefdoms may have arose the single unified Kingdom of Israel, though some scholars are skeptical if a unified kingdom ever actually existed. At the very least, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah did seem to eventually coalesce, constituting the Jewish nation must like the ancient and independent Greek city-states constituted the Greek nation.
The several conquests of the Levant might have spelled the elimination of Jewish national identity if not for the fact that that identity was deeply embedded in the people, and was also uniquely suited for survival even when immersed in foreign influences. Jewish culture was inherently tribal, genealogical, and nomadic, seeped in strong convictions to adhere to tradition, all guided by religious instruction. This has proven to be a recipe that allowed the Jewish race to persist throughout thousands of years of diaspora. Practice of the Jewish faith has gone hand-in-hand with preservation of Jewish ethnicity during this time. The result in the 21st century is a remarkable example of a religion (the Jewish faith) that has a high degree of positive correlation with a racial identity (the Jewish race) which has been long lost to ancient history among every other society in the world.
In other words, you want to just ignore facts and history so that you can make up whatever reality you choose to imagine.
