[ccmay]

The blond hair and blue eyes are because Jewish women have for centuries been the object of cruelties at the hands of the minions of many emperors, chieftains, sultans, boyars, kings, czars, and fuehrers.

There is a sad but pragmatic reason that Jews trace their ancestry matrilineally.

[wardaddy]

Jews adopted matrilineal descent prior to the diaspora...sometime around Augustus I think

btw...

all women were subject to the sexual whims of the nobility and conquerers

not just Jewish women

my own ancestors too I’d reckon

Celts by Romans..

then Pax Romana Britons by Saxons

then Saxons by Danes

then all by Normans and so forth

I’ve seen studies that Med peoples were fairer in Biblical times than now....Romans and Greeks for sure and Phonecian type and Jews too possibly..who knows

[Sender]

I still struggle to understand the concept of Jewishness. At times it seems like a genetic lineage, at other times it seems like a faith. I could convert to orthodox Judaism, but since I have no Jewish ancestry (that I know of), it seems that I would still not really be part of the “tribe”. As for genetic lineage, it seems that a completely nonobservant Jew with the proper ancestry is still a Jew. In Islam, the lineage comes from the father but if a child rejects Islam, they are not only infidels but apostates worthy of death. In most other faiths, genetics has nothing to do with them. You either adopt the faith or don’t.