Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2014 May 15

= May 15 =

why does being Jewish descent mean only through one's Jewish mother and not father?
Very puzzling............. Venustar84 (talk) 08:23, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * See Who is a Jew?, the Bible quotes cited there, and Mater semper certa est. (And I assume you mean descent, not decent.) Pais (talk) 08:33, 15 May 2014 (UTC)


 * There's really nothing puzzling about it. The premise is that you know who the mother is, but you might not know for sure who the father is. Keep in mind that tradition was established long before DNA tests, or blood tests for that matter. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:38, 15 May 2014 (UTC)


 * There's 232 DNA letters and all humans have the same 99% If a Jew settled in China, she would immediately be mobbed by suitors. If this happened by ~1361 AD, after 653 years you could now have an all-Han relatives bar mitzvah with Mandarin chatter headed by a white rabbi without the boy having a single converted ancestor or chromosome piece that came from a Jew. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 12:34, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You lost me at the bakery. However, you did remind me of the old "Two Jews get off a streetcar" story. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 12:54, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * And you reminded me of Mrs. Schmigelsky's baby boy again. The paternal owlishness is clearer than the Jewishness. InedibleHulk (talk) 13:28, 15 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I still haven't seen a valid reference. Although they killed him off in last week's episode, so maybe it's no longer relevant. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 15:05, 15 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Did SMW inadvertantly recount the origin story of the Kaifeng Jews without meaning to? The small text makes it seem like his statement is in jest, and if so, perhaps he should read about the Kaifeng Jews... -- Jayron  32  14:43, 15 May 2014 (UTC)