Judaism: Race, Culture, or Religon?

                Many people have questioned what exactly Judaism is. Is it a religion, culture or race?  There are many facts that will be shown to prove that Judaism is in fact a religion.  From these real facts you will be able to see that Judaism is not a race nor a culture but a religion.

                Firstly, Judaism is a religion based on tradition and the Bible, a sacred text.  All of the Jews believe in one God.  In the Bible, God said that these people who believe in Him and worship Him as per the instructions passed down from were His chosen people.  After Moses freed all of the chosen from slavery and brought down the Ten Commandments form Mt. Sinai, Judaism was born as the religion of the law of one true God.  Judaism then gathered many followers and expanded its traditions and became a major religion.  Judaism has a form of priesthood and rites of passage as many other religions do.  All of these facts put together prove that Judaism is a religion. 

                The first argument against this is the Holocaust was used to kill the Jews as a race.  The Holocaust, or sacrifice by fire, was an atrocity committed by Nazi Germany during the reign of Adolf Hitler that was intended to kill off the whole "Jewish race".  Hitler came up with all kinds of Jew finding tests, include such things as measuring the length and angle a person's nose.  All of the tests were based on pseudoscientific research and anti-Semitism.  For someone to be Jewish it was not considered they were part of a single race until the Nazi party decided what people were classified as Jews.  The main fault with Judaism being a race is the fact that anyone from any race may choose to become Jewish and someone born a Jew may become a Christian, or part of any other religion.  But, no one may change their race because it is part of there DNA, their biological makeup.

                Lastly, Judaism is not a culture.  There is no one basic way of life that a Jew is supposed to live because there are many sects of Judaism.  If Judaism was a culture then all of the Jews all over the world would have the same morals, values, and taboos.  The Ashkenazi Jews, Sephardic Jews and the Mizrachi Jews all have a different way of life and are descendents form different parts of the world.  The Ashkenazi Jews use Yiddish as their Jewish language where as the Sephardic Jews use Ladino.  If Judaism were a culture shared by all Jews they would all have the same sacred language.

The differences of the sects do not make any of the groups less Jewish then the other.  From this we can conclude that Judaism is not a culture or an ethnic group.

                It may seem complicated when you try to bring all of the people from Judaism together into one group of anything except a religion.  Judaism is not a race nor is it a culture; the only thing that makes sense is it is a religion.  To state otherwise it would be like saying all Catholics are Spanish or all Hindus are Indian.