hrandani

My understanding is all people with Jewish relatives or ancestors strongly identify themselves as Jews, and it's something you can never escape, regardless if you actively practice the religion or not. So in that respect it is kind of an artificial 'race' with strong bonds to fellow Jews. Although, there are racial differentiations of jews, like Azkenazi (sp?) etc

Now, people who convert to Judaism are also Jewish, and thus don't have the same rules apply, but other Jews occasionally don't consider them to be as Jewish.

This is what I've picked up growing up around a synagogue.