COME BACK, WHOOPI; ALL IS FORGIVEN:

Is being Jewish a race? A national origin? An ethnicity? A religion? All four?

The answer is: It's complicated.

To begin with, in late 1800s America, "race" was often used to include groups such as Jews, Arabs, Swedes, Italians, and the like. That's important, because the Civil Rights Act of 1866 provided that "All persons" have the same rights "to make and enforce contracts ... and to the full and equal benefit of all laws," "as is enjoyed by white citizens." And in Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb (1987), the Supreme Court held that this covered discrimination against Jews (even though most of us would today be generally viewed as "white") and not just against, say, Blacks or Asians:

[T]he question before us is not whether Jews are considered to be a separate race by today's standards, but whether, at the time [the Civil Rights Act of 1866] was adopted, Jews constituted a group of people that Congress intended to protect. ... Jews and Arabs were among the peoples then considered to be distinct races and hence within the protection of the statute.

This view of Jews as a race was also of course the view held by the Nazis as late as the 1930s and 1940s, but it was common even among non-antisemites in 1800s America--the term "race" was often used more broadly then that it is now.

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