The Torah is a living document, and there are many people who live it and live with it, reading it differently than do Muman613 and JIDF. You don’t like Ms. Giffords’ way of being Jewish, or my way — that’s your problem, not mine. One reason that 90% of American Jews are not Orthodox is the attitude in some segments of the Orthodox community of my way or the highway. In choosing the highway, and by being players in American society, we made it possible for you to live your lives as you see fit — demonstrating once again that no good deed goes unpunished.

Excuse me, what is this supposed to mean? Don’t intermarry, you might get shot in the head, but that’ll be cool because you’ll serve as an example to all the other Jews? Clarify your statement, if you will. If not, I will take it for what it appears to be: a justification of violence towards intermarried Jews, and Jews who are born of intermarriages. Your statement is utterly vile, especially in the aftermath of this tragedy.

As a Jewish woman with a Jewish father and quaker mother, I really don’t like this whole “purebred, mixed breed” terminology. For goodness sakes, we’re human beings, not showdogs. I don’t see my parents’ backgrounds as making me different from other Jews. The distinction barely even comes up in my everyday life. I feel the same way about the term “half” Jewish: I’m not half Jewish, my identity is not fractured.

MY TWITTER FEED WHERE I TALK ABOUT COMIC BOOKS.

Intermarriage isn’t discussed as the fleeing of a deteriorating and stagnant American Jewish community failing to adapt to new demands on religious communities, universally high fluidity in religious identification, and a distaste for ethnic homogeneity. This is an American phenomenon, not a solely Jewish one. While the Christian Right blames “the war on Christmas,” the Jewish community blames intermarriage. That sex lives are singled out seems Freudian.

And it’s sad but true that Jewishness includes a racial element — thanks to Hitler, anti-Semites and the enshrinement of it in the Law of Return. We’ve all heard someone’s parents (like my own) ask after a new significant other, “Is she Jewish?” And the reply comes, “Yes, but she’s not religious.” The racially-tinged reply inevitably follows: “That’s okay, at least she’s Jewish.” That’s definitely not the definition you’re proposing, KRG, but that’s how the conservation goes.

Any conversation where intermarriage defines the terms of discussing Jewish continuity necessitates to me the use of “purebred.” Just to highlight how far astray we are.

www.eff.org/issues/anonymity

It’s a shame Jewschool editors/writers do not respect that right whatsoever, as they try to “out” the identity of people who dare to make a critical comment on their measly site.

it appears you cannot handle criticism. i will be posting my comment, in full, on Twitter—along with your butchering of it.