Slag, the Jews may have been a race at one time...when they were a group of tribes enslaved in Egypt...but they are not a race any longer, and they haven't been for a long time. They are a cultural group, united simply by sharing certain cultural values which are identified as "Jewish" BY the Jews (and by other people around them).

You can be a Jew and not be one bit religious. If so, you may do a number of "Jewish" things, you may follow Jewish social customs, but you won't worship Jehovah and you won't necessarily follow what's in the Jewish holy books or believe it (although you will probably follow some of it).

Woody Allen is a Jew. He's also a very outspoken atheist, and there are many other Jews who would agree with him on that 100%.

In fact, if you think about it long enough, it becomes kind of funny. What the heck IS a Jew, anyway??? No one seems to know, except for this: he or she must have had a Jewish mother.

But, wait! Did Sammy Davis Jr, who converted to Judaism, have a Jewish mother???? I don't think so.

Okay then... It must be this: if anybody whatsoever, no matter their race or cultural origin claims to BE a Jew, then they are one from that moment on, unless they change their mind about it. And if they don't claim to BE a Jew...then they aren't one...unless, of course, they had a Jewish mother...in which case they really ARE Jewish, but they're in denial about it or working undercover!

LOL!!!! The mind boggles.

I don't know of any other group of people in the world who quite fit that kind of odd and hard to pin down cultural labeling, frankly, but maybe there is one and I just haven't thought of it.

I also would say that the vast majority of the world's tribal peoples since time immemorial have claimed to be God's Chosen or have assumed that they were a people specially picked out and sponsored in some way by God, over and above other people. They all thought they were God's Chosen. The Romans did. The Greeks did. The Trojans did. The Lakota did. The Japanese did. The Chinese did. The Germans did. Many Americans seem to now! It is not an exclusively Jewish notion at all, but a tacit assumption held by virtually every ancient culture of people.

Why? Because people are ethnocentric, that's why. ;-)