A professor of mine who once taught in the Middle East recalled leading a discussion on what it means to be Jewish. The only consensus that could be reached: You are a Jew if you call yourself a Jew and can get the majority of people who call themselves Jews to agree with you. (The same definition was established for "Arab.")

Now I read this in Terry Mattingly's column about the National Jewish Population Survey of 2000-2001, "the most detailed statistical portrait of American Jews ever assembled."

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."

Guess that narrows it down ...