If Israel wants to tell millions of Jews around the world that they are not Jewish enough, fine. I hope and pray that these Jews don't visit Israel, don't contribute to any Israeli charity, and stop lobbying their governments to support Israel. Without support from the diaspora Israel would be just another third world country and it's time that Jews stop allowing themselves to be denigrated and belittled and made to feel unwelcome by a chosen few. Let's see how long the Israeli economy and government can survive without the unwavering support it has enjoyed since 1948 from the diaspora

does not need a state or a place be whatever you want to be in any place on this planet but if any state wants to have a religion >religion does not need a state or borders

Israel will be destroyed from internal strife and not external aggression. shame on Bibi that is willing to sacrifice the nation to stay in power. shame on ultra orthodox that act like they are god. god must be laughing.

What is this country coming to? I'm wondering why anyone bothers to make an effort, change their life and come live here - for what? For anyone reading this and are thinking of making allyah, seriously, don't bother. It's akin to living in Iran. In today's world where Jews are hated, Israel is boycotted and Antisemitism if rife, anyone who wants to stand up and be accepted as a Jew should be embraced and welcomed - not shunned and humiliated. Makes me SICK! And the worst part, these primitive Plebs who want to make this happen, are selective in their understanding of what it means to be a Jew - they bypass the bit where it says no stealing and no lying (because it suits them to do so) - they're just a bunch of thieves, liars,child molesters AND they beat up our soldiers. Bibi, grow a pair man!

The Orthodox in Israel are playing politics with Judaism. According to their standards, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would not be Jews either. Where would Judaism and the State of Israel be today without non-Orthodox Jews? If a person has a Jewish soul, how can the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel now decide that person no longer has a Jewish soul? I thought only Hashem could determine the spirituality of another human being. I hope the government will do the right thing and keep Jews together. If not, it doesn‘t matter because Israel will not be around long anyway. Climate change will make it impossible for anybody to live there by 2050, if not sooner.

According to the majority view in contemporary Judaism nobody is stripped of his recognition as Jew, this is a decision of the state of Israel and the orthodox rabbinate, the converts and their children and grandchildren are still Jews acc. to the majority view of rabbis worldwide and acc. to a minority of rabbis inside Israel.It is a major problem for converts and their descendants living in Israel, also because of the implications on their citizen rights (marriage, opportunity for the state to cancel citizenship), but for those who don't it is just a reason to continue building and safeguarding Jewish life in the Diaspora as long as the "Jewish state" is not a state for all Jews.

First treating women as second class when it comes to praying at the Kotel?

Now a possible law that cruelly excludes tens of thousands of converts by way of arbitrary and contradictory interpretations of the law?

Included are many tens of thousands of mixed marraiges for whom the door to a Jewish life in Israel could be summarily shut in their faces

And what next?

Persecution and rejection of all liberal and reform traditions?

Is this Gordon Bennetts (term of exasperation) doing? He needs to keep his proverbial hair on, control his motor mouth..and work toward inclusion not exclusion

there are non Jews anti semites! worse...there are Jewish anti semites! that realy hurts.

A jew is somebody who feels like a jew adhering to all the principles of the Thora.
No one except G-d can remove this privilege to a jew feeling like one.
All the Rabbis should sit together and think for once that if jews are the chosen ones, and if the Rabbis choose to deprive them their right to be jews , then jews will belong to a lost civilisation in the not so long future.
Long live the jews whoever they are.

Modern Jews are direct descendants of Judeans. At the time when the nations question our status as indigenous people of the Land even totally righteous converts are a liability to us. We should maintain strictest standards for conversion and limit number of converts because of this.

Are Jews a Mid Eastern/Mediterranean ethnic group of people originating from the Levant or a religion? We are both. We are a unique ethnic group adhering to our very own religious spiritual tradition.

Jews are both an ethnic group of Mid Eastern/Mediterranean origins (with Mid Eastern DNA and Mid Eastern/Mediterranean phenotype) and a spiritual religious group.

The word Jew is derived from the word "Judean" and the word "Judean" was referring to the ancient Israelites who either belonged to the Israelite tribe of Judah or who lived in the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah.

And the reason Israel is called Israel is because Jacob was renamed Israel, and his children became "the Children of Israel" - meaning "Israelites", and they renamed Canaan into Israel. And before the Israelites called themselves Israelites, they called themselves "Hebrews". "Hebrews" is the first and original name of our people. The Hebrews became Israelites, who in turn became Judeans/Jews.

You cannot ignore the ethnic character of being a Jew, and the reason why these conflicts exist to begin with is because our ancestors and our fellow modern Jews have decided to cling onto a rather schizophrenic dual definition of who a Jew is.

Turn the debate and the definition away from religion and into the original national ethnic tribalism that characterized our people from the very start.

I do not view converts as "Jews" for the simple reason that they may convert to our religion but cannot convert to our ethnicity. I migth migrate to Japan and learn their ways and speak their language and pay taxes but I will never become ethnically Japanese, and I have no problem with that. Japan is merely an example. Don't take it literally. I ain't going to Japan.

Jewish to me means ethnic national tribalism, with its unique religious spiritual cultural character. "Jews" are not meant to be a denotation of any ethnicity or racial stock on this planet. "Jews" is supposed to be a denotation of our specific tribe.

And anyone who suggests that I'm a "racist" is really the real racist. I have the same right as everyone else to preserve my people and feel pride over my tribal identity and neither political correctness nor the schizophrenic dual identity of the Jews will take away from me my tribal identity.

If you can't accept that Jews are a tribal identity then it should logically imply that you are racists since you cannot accept our people's ethnic background.

From roughly 2000 BCE until a few centuries after CE it was explicitly and implicitly understood that Jews constituted a NATION in their ancestral homeland. They were not converts from white Christian Europe, black Africa or Asia. They were very much Jews in the ethnic tribal sense.

I don't understand why there is such an outcry when we Jews claim we are national ethnic tribal identity, and that not everyone can be a member of it. Where are the people's outcry against Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Russian, Polish, Swedish, Dutch, Turkish, Arab, Persian, African or Chinese ethnicity and ancestry?

Do these peoples come in all shapes and colors? Clearly not.

In a normal state, there would be no link. But the problem lies in that Israel has no problem calling people from every country to move to Israel and serve as canon flesh. Then they "sell" them their Jewish identity. But no one tells them Israel is mathematically to become a theocracy and that it has never really been a democracy . Face it: Israel is so far from its original and national idea, it is to become a jewishstan with one and only
Power - that of the mafia of the Torah. Sad but unavoidable...