The Routledge Dictionary of Judaism
An ethnic identity bearing religious consequence. In the classical tradition, followed today by Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, a Jew is a person who is born of a Jewish mother or who has converted to Orthodox Judaism; in Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism, a Jew is a person born of a Jewish mother or of a Jewish father or who has converted to Judaism.
Status bestowed by birth or gained by conversion represents the melding of the ethnic and genealogical with the religious and theological. In dealing with the Jews, there is no way radically to distinguish the ethnic from the religious. In general, though, the words “Jew” and “Jewish” stress the ethnic character of the Jews as a group.
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