"Who is a Jew?

A friend just asked me via email: "Who is a Jew?" (He included an interesting article on the subject.) I answered: "Spinoza, zum Beispiel, war Jude." (Spinoza, for example, was a Jew.) But first and foremost, Bob Dylan. Also: William Shatner, Barbara Ehrenreich, Leonard Nimoy, Naomi Klein, David Lee Roth, Elizabeth Taylor, Dustin Hoffman, Peter Sellers, Abbie Hoffman, Anne Frank, Al Franken, Jerry Rubin, Warren Buffet, Elliott Gould, Wynona Ryder, Carl Sagan, George Soros, Amy Winehouse, Louis Brandeis, Mila Kunis, Theodore Bikel, Frida Kahlo, Marc Spitz, Gilda Radner, Adam Sandler, Matthew Broderick, Freud, Marx, Einstein, Jesus Christ, Barbara Streisand, Jack Ruby, or Rubenstein, and so many more. Some are "obvious" Jews, some not so much. Some of these Jews are living, some dead. All must have had Jewish mothers to be so "genuinely" Jewish. Barry Goldwater, interestingly was "Vierteljude," or one-quarter Jewish. I don't have a Jewish mama myself, so I'm NOT, unless someone "Jew-baits" me, like a guy at a free meal here in Madison recently. Or unless I feel like being as Jewish as my name sounds. I guess another answer might be: "It's complicated." http://www.docstoc.com/docs/135474361/Famous-Jewish-and-Jewish-Americanspdf If you speak/understand German, this is a valuable film, in this connection: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYYXyt1c5RU