I am so busy today that it will take time to read carefully what you sisters, Kim and Gerlinda, wrote about Jews.

But I feel I need to put this down right now before I get too busy to do it.

There have always been converts to Judaism.  These include those whom the Jews attracted to themselves so that they left Egypt with the direct descendants of Abraham.  They were the "mixed multitude".  Some of these may not have converted formally, but some did, I believe, and eventually most became a part of the Jewish group which finally arrived in Caanan after the Exodus.  They were not of monolithic descent from Abraham.  But they worshipped the One True God--except, of course, when they were backsliding and building things like the Golden Calf!

There is no place in the Bible, to my awareness, where God says that these converts were not true Jews.  In fact, the Bible is full of examples of converts who became true Jews, including the foremothers of Yeshua, Rehab and Ruth!  To say that Ruth was not a true Jew is...please, you name the word, I can't think of one sufficient to do it.

In Khazaria, much later, after the dispersion of the Jews to many lands, all the way from the steppes of Asia Minor to Ireland, there was a situation where a ruler had decided to convert to a monolithic religion, and he interviewed representatives of various religions, and decided to become a Jew.  This meant that his people had to follow, so many converted.  But everything I have read about the situation in Khazaria points to this:  there were already longstanding generations of the Sons of Abraham living in Khazaria and the general area around the Black and Caspian seas.  This is where the main branch of the Jews migrated after they were expelled from Israel in several waves of expulsion.  So the people who came out of Khazaria into Central Europe at a later date, along the mercantile migratory routes through the Danube and other rivers, were another "mixed multitude."  

You can tell, I can can anyway, which Jews have a strong Middle Eastern look and which ones are--at the extreme, blond and blue eyed.  I personally grew up with both types of Jews, and everything "in between", as my high school in Seattle (Garfield, one of the best high schools in the world, according to Quincy Jones, who went there too) was 40% or so Jewish.  The Jews who went there, with me, were of all "types" from blond-blued eyed ones to dark haired, dark eyed ones, some of whom had slightly slant eyes as if they had some kind of oriental background...but what exactly was this "oriental" genetic expression from, I could not pin-point, as even this
was complex.  

I knew many of these Jews personally and talked frankly to them about their heritage.  I went to many Jewish "parties".  One of them told me I was "exotic" to them because I wasn't Jewish.  But I was interested in them.  I even took a class with a rabbi, who said I was his best student, because I was not taking the class in order to marry a Jew (I was already married) but to learn what they believed.  

I could go on all morning, but I must sum up.  I believe there are very few "pure" Jews.  The Haredi Jews of Israel are not even pure,
although they have maintained their line for a long period of time.  The issue of what is a genetic Jew and what is a faith-Jew is so complex that few understand it, and one would have to be a Ph.D. in the subject to even start.

I am glad that my husband was half Jewish, yet a Christian, the perfect person for me.  God sent me the perfect person for me and this was the best thing that happened to me in a long and struggling life.  My husband rescued me from a bad situation, as Boaz rescued Ruth.  I hope to meet him soon again.  It is an anxious world without one's true love.



Mariel