On 18 Mar 2004 16:24:02 GMT, ospam (Jerome Bibuld)
wrote:

Concerning "the fact" that Botwinnik "was a Jew", Scam Spam not unexpectedly
goes along with the racist lie that a person with a Jewish ancestor MUST be
Jewish, just as a person "with one drop of Negro blood" must be "Negro".
Judaism is a religion and/or a culture -- nothing more nor less. One is Jewish
if one professes that religion or accepts that culture as one's own.

Of course, in saying this, you ascribe a privileged position to your
own secular worldview. Observant Jews define a Jew as someone whose
mother was Jewish or who was converted by whomever that observant Jew
considers to be a valid authority. They would consider the biological
filter, by which one could be 7/8 gentile, 1/8 Jewish, as irrelevant
or nonsensical.

While I generally share *your* viewpoint in this regard, it might not
be appropriate for one outside a culture or religion to define the
criteria by which another belongs to that culture or religion. I
suspect you would not look favorably on, for example, a government
agency's benchmarks overriding tribal criteria as to what constitutes
American Indian tribal membership.

While
other members of Botwinnik's family -- most notably Igor -- have proudly
professed Judaism, I never have heard of Mikhail Botwinnik's position, either
as Jewish or as non-Jewish.

I have seen a number of references claiming that Botwinnik's position
in Soviet society was always somewhat precarious due to his Jewish
ancestry.