The dignity of the American president?? Although Schwartz makes some good points...what is it with these former San Francisco leftists turned neocons? Don't they know political and religious extremism aren't the only way to get attention? Note: He's executive director of an organization that he founded...The Center for ISLAMIC Pluralism with how many token Muslims?

Yes, he does make some significant points, but the Neocon approach is indeed extremism as expressed by the previous comment. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the concept of a formerly Jewish (if that's possible since it's an ethnicity in my opinion) leftist turned Muslim Neocon. What a strange world we live in...

My guess would be that Stephen Schwartz is formerly Jewish because he accepted Allah as the one and true G-d, with Mohammed as its only prophet, and has been a practicing Sufist for decades upon decades? But otherwise, totally still Jewish.

 Huh.

His bio says he started seriously examining Islam in 1990...hardly qualifies as decades upon decades. And like the poster before you said, Jewish is more of an ethnicity than a religion. That's why Schwartz is on here, assuming we will still consider him "one of us." Thankfully the majority of American Jews read between the lines and realize the world isn't black and white, but rather gray and would never be duped by a bandwagon jumping Neocon opportunist. Uhh Huh.

From my understanding, he was long involved in Sufism (dating back to the 60s and such). Just didn't begin to formally study Islam until the 90s while serving as a journalist in the Balkans. Immaterial, I know. Just a point of clarity.

 And I would say that he is on here not because he is "one of us" (which he is as a cousin, a brother in this world) but because he is a well-published scholar and student of Islam, as well as a scholar on Jewish history in the Balkans and the US.

a world of difference between peoplehood and ethnicity.  Judaism is a religion that encompasses any number of ethnicities. And a religion that one chooses whether or not to be a member of.  Would you consider a Catholic convert to Islam to still be a Catholic?

You are right, a Catholic convert to Islam would no longer be Catholic, just like Schwartz is no longer a Jew by religion. The problem is he never was a practicing Jew, yet bills himself as a Jewish convert to Islam. And a Muslim Neocon who used to be Jewish happens to be a much more lucrative hook (and more palatable to the world at large)...it even landed him a feature on this Jewish website. 

Schwartz does not describe himself as Jewish. In fact he rejects the term "convert" because he says he had no previous religion from which to convert. "Jewish" is a term that seems to have been foisted upon him by others because of (1) his Jewish ancestry, (2) his background in Jewish media, e.g., The Forward, (3) his great knowledge of and interest in Jewish culture, history, and religion, and (4) his generally astronomical Jewdar reading.

Incidentally, in my encounters with him he's struck me as an exceptionally warm and decent guy (as well as a voraciously inquisitive one). Really an unusual person. I'd like to claim him as "one of us," but perhaps that's a bit presumptuous of me, along the lines of how we proudly claim Karl Marx, Felix Mendelssohn, and others as Jews even though they were baptized, never regarded themselves as Jewish, and (at least in Marx's case) actively disliked Jewish culture. Regardless, if Schwartz accomplishes enough, you can be sure our grandkids will be yammering about his Jewishness. 

I doubt many Jews today "proudly" claim Marx as a Jew, except for the dwindling number of mostly elderly Jewish communists, and the small but vocal number of Marxist anti-Israel Jewish activists.  He was, as you say, anti-Jewish in his outlook, despite being of Jewish birth, and the philosophy he inspired has created much suffering for Jews.  Hardly someone for us to be proud of.

Judas Nehora,

No matter what we think of his political ideology, Marx has a permanent place in the mouths and hearts of Jews as a testament to Jewish genius. He's part of that endlessly cited Trinity of titanic secular Yiddische kops: Marx, Freud, and Einstein, who took the brilliance and learning of a medieval Talmud Torah and loosed it on the modern world. Or whatever. That's basically the story we're running with.

Point is that Marx and Freud's brains and influence on the gentile world stroke our communal self-esteem, just as do those endlessly recirculated e-mail lists of Jewish Nobel Prize winners. Whether we like the theories they produced is a separate matter entirely. We're good compartmentalizers, apparently.

Anyway, Judas, I call you this because I've discovered that you--yes, you, the truest of the true! Jewcy's own Simon Peter, our Michael ibn Abu Talib--have started a blog somewhere out there on the internetz! What's wrong with our Jewcy user page blogs? Do they suck??

I don't have any idea what you're talking about, Joey.  I haven't started my own blog.  I have a friends-only LiveJournal under a different name. This other blog is therefore someone else.  Do you have a link?

So, if being of Jewish heritage (be it Ashkenazi or Sephardic or Falasha or Middle Eastern) is only a reliious affiliation and not an ethnicity (or ethnicites) as well then why the hell does this non-religious Jewish site even exist?? And why would so many of the obviously secular writers be involved? From the viewpoint that "Jewishness" is only based on relgious practice, then most American Jews apparently aren't actually Jewish, unless you include going to your Aunt's house for Passover and giving your mom a DVD for Hanukkah being religious.

In North America, due to vast intermarriage, Jewishness is in fact becoming less of an ethicity and culture and more of a loose relgious affiliation. But that is less true in other parts of the world, and doesn't take away from that fact that the major Jewish ETHNIC groups, within their distinct communities, shared similar gene pools, physical features, diseases ( i.e. SACHS DISEASE, which is found only in Ashkenazi Jews), etc. for many centuries. As well, studies have shown that Ashkenazis and Shephardics also share DNA.

Now, one could say that this in due to the fact that most Jews only married other Jews, particulary in their local communities, but that is exactly how ethnic groups develop over time. The concept that you are only Jewish if you go to Shul and follow very specific religious guidelines, and not if you have Jewish parents who raise you with certain values, traditions, and cultural traits, is one of the reasons that Judaism is dying off.

still, even if it's not religious it is cultural.
It's true that physically, Jewish people share genetics, but
that's a matter of isolation, and it follows from being culturally Jewish, and not the other way around. So ethnicity is an effect, not a cause.

It's important to understand that something like being Jewish, being Muslim, all these identities are formed. no one is born with Torah issuing forth from their babe's mouth.

All clannishness that follows is the merry float down life is just a dream. Nothing essential is touched by taking on an identity, it's merely a component of passage through ineffable flux.

praise be to those with the courage and strength to take on the mysterious flux head on, and not be in flight from flight.