Thank you for making the apology. I don't have a problem with asking questions--it's how people learn--and was a lot more distressed by the shift from ignorance (which I am using in the same way Kita does above) to mockery by other posters. That said, I found your comment here a little frustrating because I have just made a five-point post which describes in great detail why *I* dislike the term; googling could tell you why many Jews dislike the term; and the only person who can tell you which particular reasons apply to Mama Deb is Mama Deb. I don't speak for her any more than I speak for Kita or shalott. So the way the discussion keeps coming back to people requesting that Jews who object to the term restate and clarify their explanations, after several people have already made them, feels less like ignorance than resistance.

I'd like to add in something which I think may be relevant, or at least helpful as a pointer to different ways different people are thinking about the question, which is that I am also an atheist and that I see no conflict between these two identities, even though Judaism is commonly spoken of as a "religion." In the West, "religion" is defined with Christianity as the norm, and I don't think that people who come from Christian backgrounds--even if they do not characterize themselves as Christians and have been subject to discrimination on this basis--are always aware of how the default assumption of Christianity affects their reasoning.