What about the Jews?

This is a post from Yahoo Answers, which I've been fooling with instead of working on my column. The kids who ask these things are generally quite young, and many live in English-speaking nations quite different from ours, e.g. Malaysia. Thus I try to be reasonably respectful when giving answers. Reasonably.

How do people know when someone is a Jew?
They have black Jews, like Sammy Davis Jr. and white Jews.I see people on movies and TV and they say they are Jews.Like the movie Independence Day and the guy puts on the little hat. He looks like anyone on the street I mean how do people know? Every where on here it talks about Jews this and that. They just look like regular white people to me.

This is what I answered:

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Yep. We're clever that way.

Maybe two thousand years ago, the Jews were a nation, like Denmark. They lived in Judea. No problem.

Then, for the same reasons that make people generally crazy over there, they decided to revolt against the Romans, who were generally in charge of the countryside at that time. They had a good deal from the Romans, who let them choose their own king and not serve in the Army, provided they rendered unto Caesar.

But lust for revolution ran hot, and the local equivalent of the Hezbollah thought that Jesus would be their leader, which he flatly refused to be, his kingdom being of another world. So they framed him on whatever charges they could come up with and turned him over to the Romans. The New Testament elucidates on this matter further.

Fifty years later, the Hezbollah raised another army against the Romans, who'd finally had enough. They wiped out the army, tore down the Temple, and threw everyone out. Some Judeans went north and became the Ashkenzi, some went south and to Spain and became the Sephardi, and they found their way into most every nation, keeping up the old religion, now somewhat reformed by events. Because we were no longer a nation with its own land, we stopped sacrificing animals and having high priests and money-changers. The desire to get back to Palestine became something of a cult within the religion: my grandfather was buried with a sack of earth from Jerusalem as a pillow, a ritual performed so that it could be said that his head now rested upon the Holy Land.

But there's never been much evidence that the Jews were any sort of a racial group. The people in that part of the world are often swarthy, dark-haired Arabs, but there are blondes and redheads among them. Except for having blue eyes, I'd make a pretty good Arab, hooked nose and all, but my grandparents looked like they were Swedish.

I've really never been able to figure out why the hell everyone is so sore at us for being Jews. Not accepting the divinity of Jesus is one thing, but the Moslems are sore at us too, and for what isn't at all apparent.

And so, having nearly been wiped out several times, we've learned how to fight, and established our own fortress-state, unpleasant as its foreign and domestic policies might be. Apparently we're pretty good survivors, so you'll just have to learn to live with us.

We write pretty good comedy shows and write lots of songs, and we're good doctors, bankers and lawyers. I must apologize for the ugly synagogues and Marc Chagall, though; I'm afraid that we took the deal about graven images much too seriously. But we won't do anything to Jesus or your kids except teach them evolution. Really.

Source:

When I was three I asked my mother why we didn't have a Christmas tree.

M Kinsler