Judaism as a concept, one of the things that confuses a lot of people about it is the question of what it is, that is, are we talking about a religion?

Are we talking about an ethnicity? Are we talking about a nation? Are we talking about a people? Like what when someone says

Judaism? What is the thing that they're talking about? The problem the problem with

answering that question is that these are all Western concepts and Judaism proceeds the invention of the West.

And I am almost tempted to say all the things that it's not so that people will understand them what it is.

It's not a race because you can't convert to be a race.

It's not a religion because there are Jews who are not religious, but they're still Jews.

There's no contradiction there. You're born Jewish and you're not

born Christian because you have to have a certain belief system. So maybe the best way to describe it is as a religious family.

Because you're born into a family, you can join a family, and really the only way you leave a family is if you choose another family.

And historically in the Jewish tradition, even though according to Jewish law,

even if you convert, you're still considered Jewish,

organically the community didn't accept people generally who

converted to another religion.

Some people will say that Judaism is something you can never convert out of.

Once you're a Jew, you're always a Jew. Do you think that's true?

Well, that became an issue during the Spanish Inquisition. When so many Jews converted under duress that they used an old Tomutic principle which reads a

Jew even if he sins is still a Jew to refer to conversion because they wanted to make it possible

for those Jews to come back easily into Judaism and not to feel shame because

what they did wasn't really of their own choice.

And so that's become a sort of Jewish legal principle that you really can't confer it out of Judaism.

So that's the standard Jewish legal principle, but I mean organically speaking the truth is you can because in a

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