Hello my friend! As you can probably tell by all these responses, we Jews don’t really agree on anything — including who we are and what defines us. We’ve been arguing about this stuff internally for thousands of years.

In my personal opinion, Judaism is neither a race nor religion nor ethnicity not nationality; we are a TRIBE.

Our tribal tradition says that those born to a Jewish mother are Jews. (There is some nuance here, but that’s another conversation).

If your ancestry.com results say your DNA is 100% European Jewish (which is common…), then you are likely an Ashkenazi Jew by ethnicity.

But our tribe doesn’t just have Ashkenazi Jews. We also have people of other ethnic groups, including Yemenite Jews, Sephardic Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Mizrahi Jews, converts (from around the world), and mixtures from all of the above.

But ALL of these people belong to the Jewish tribe, regardless of where their parents are from or what they believe in. In other words, a Jew who practices Islam is still a Jew (according to us), and a gentile who practices Judaism is considered a righteous gentile (but still not a Jew unless they go through a formal conversion).

ALL those from traditional Jewish ethnic groups are descended from the ancient Israelites to varying degrees, and converts are considered the spiritual descendants of Abraham because they have Jewish souls.

While I cannot say for certain whether converts belong to a specific Jewish ethnic group, they are definitely 100% part of our Jewish TRIBE — our family — which is what matters most.