"Jews are not so much about ethnicity than about religion. Jews are the nation of Torah, not blood." Yes and no. Bloodline became more of a focus during and af

"Jews are not so much about ethnicity than about religion. Jews are the nation of Torah, not blood." Yes and no. Bloodline became more of a focus during and after the Holocaust -- which is somewhat bitterly ironic, given that the Holocaust was perpetrated in the name of blood purity. As a "half-Jew," and particularly as someone whose Jewish half is on the paternal side, I've been deemed "not really Jewish" by almost all but the most Reform branches of Judaism that I've encountered. I wouldn't be accepted into an Orthodox congregation except by conversion, because I am considered a gentile in their eyes. Even after being bar mitzvahed, I was labeled a "Jew by choice," with the slightly derisive implication that such a label carried second-class status among the Jewish populace. The obsession with matrilineal purity is still quite strong. It shouldn't be. Jews make up an extreme minority of the worldwide population, and even of the US population. If anything, the faith needs to expand, not double down on supposed bloodline purity (especially purity of increasingly dubious genetic provability). But bloodline still carries a lot of weight in many Jewish communities, typically in direct proportion to the degree of religious orthodoxy of a given community. (My paternal grandmother, a third-generation Jewish American, refused to attend my parents' wedding on account of my father's marrying a gentile. She, like many old-school Jews, didn't quite understand the mathematical implications of marrying within the faith and the supposed bloodline -- that it is a self-limiting strategy, and potentially self-defeating, given how often the faith has come close to being severely endangered).