{"id":228,"date":"2004-07-25T19:23:00","date_gmt":"2004-07-25T19:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=228"},"modified":"2004-07-25T19:23:00","modified_gmt":"2004-07-25T19:23:00","slug":"228","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=228","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Is Starhawk (still) Jewish?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Terry Mattingly of the religion-and-journalism blog GetReligion<\/a> has posted recently<\/a> on the difficulties of determining Jewish identity, both for Jews and for journalists. <\/p>\n

His post is based on the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001; the link is to a longer article that he wrote. What caught my eye was his line about “non-monotheistic religion,” but then he mentions Islam (?!). And here I was expecting some exploration of the prominence of certain Jewish Pagans.<\/p>\n

The survey defined a Jew as someone whose “religion is Jewish, OR, whose religion is Jewish and something else, OR, who has no religion and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing, OR, who has a non-monotheistic religion, and has at least one Jewish parent or a Jewish upbringing.”<\/em><\/p>\n

I guess people like Mimi “Starhawk” Simos<\/a> belong in a “hard-to-define, niche spirituality” to newspaper religion writers, to quote Mattingly’s blogging colleague, Douglas LeBlanc<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here is Jewish commentary<\/a> from Starhawk’s home town, but it focuses on the dating and marriage issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Starhawk (still) Jewish? Terry Mattingly of the religion-and-journalism blog GetReligion has posted recently on the difficulties of determining Jewish identity, both for Jews and for journalists. His post is based on the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001; the link is to a longer article that he wrote. What caught my eye was his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-228","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2651,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2651","url_meta":{"origin":228,"position":0},"title":"South Koreans Love Judaism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Sometimes I think we study religions just for the weirdness of the passing parade. Consider this article on South Koreans' fascination with Judaism: Stories from the Talmud as a required school text? Jewish books in vending machines? A few South Koreans have converted, but they have to go elsewhere to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Judaism\"","block_context":{"text":"Judaism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=judaism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=128","url_meta":{"origin":228,"position":1},"title":"Paul Bremer as Pilate, 1\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 26, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Paul Bremer as Pilate, 1 Today is Ash Wednesday, the day that Mel Gibson's movie The Passion of The Christ opened at theatres. (I noticed a student with a smudge on her forehead and almost called her attention to it--then I caught myself!) I am waiting for all the political\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1611,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1611","url_meta":{"origin":228,"position":2},"title":"Stuff [blank] Culture Likes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 8, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"First there was Stuff [bourgeois bohemian] White People Like, which produced various imitations, such as Stuff Black People Like and Don't Like. And in the religion field, Stuff Christian Culture Likes, by a blogging PK\u2014and now its imitator, Stuff Pagan Culture Likes. And there is Stuff Jewish Young Adults Like.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":14050,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=14050","url_meta":{"origin":228,"position":3},"title":"Will Christians Fulfill a Pagan Emperor’s Plan?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 15, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Julian \"The Philosopher,\" Rome's last Pagan emperor (mid-360s), would get chuckle out of this. (Although to me he comes across as super-serious, he must have found some things funny. I hope.) While he was force-fed Christian theology by bishops, growing up in a royal Christian household, he later studied ancient\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Christianity\"","block_context":{"text":"Christianity","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=christianity"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Julian_antioch-mint-bull.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5265,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5265","url_meta":{"origin":228,"position":4},"title":"Appeals Court Grants Partial Victory in California Chaplain Case","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Ninth Circuit Court has partly upheld the Wiccan challenge (headed by volunteer prison chaplain Patrick McCollum) to California's \"Five Faiths\" policy for who gets paid prison chaplains and who does not. Read this helpful blog post from FindLaw and ponder the question, was there a Jewish crime wave in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":573,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=573","url_meta":{"origin":228,"position":5},"title":"Jewish PaganismA writer for the\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Jewish PaganismA writer for the Forward samples Jewish paganism and ponders its ethical emplications. But, I asked the rabbi, how do we know that we're not in danger of precisely that which so many sacred texts warn about? The answer, he said, is ethics. \"You know it's holy eros because\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}