Hellenistic Vs. Today

In our Jewish History class, we are discussing the Hellenistic period when the Greeks ruled over the Israelites. A major issue that the Jews had during this time was deciding between weather to embrace their Israeli culture or the new Greek culture that was so dominant over them. For me, I’ve always felt like I’m at a bit of an awkward position regarding how others view how religious I am personally. To me, I consider myself very Jewish; I go to temple multiple times a week and am involved in many extra curricular activities there. But according to most Jews, I’m not actually Jewish, because my mom is Christian, and my dad is Jewish, and your religion is based on your mother’s religion. Its happened more than a few times that people have told me that I’m not actually Jewish and there is nothing more frustrating than that. I think this is most likely how most of the Jews saw themselves. A large part of them probably wanted to think of themselves as Jewish, but couldn’t ignore the fact that they were assimilating to the Hellenistic culture and values. While being surrounded by a predominately Christian culture, we are exposed to a variety of beliefs that differ greatly from ours.