What it means to be Jewish

Here at Moishe House St. Louis we recently did something that I wanted to recommend to other houses that are in the same situation as us: different interest and intelligence levels when it comes to Judaism. We had a What it means to be Jewish conversation with a local rabbi. Originally this idea came to us from the fact that whether you like it or not, sometimes people ask you to speak for the Jewish people on large ideas like abortion, homosexuality, opinions of other religions, etc. In those situations I have always wanted some kind of single sentence answer. Why don't Jews believe in Jesus? "Well....", one so I can look intelligent and two so there is less ignorance in the world. Up until this point however, I was mostly the ignorant one. We compiled a list of about 15 questions, asked the rabbi to research the jewish position and invited our community to come on down. While the turnout was much less than our normal events (which is partially to be expected), we still had more people than our expectations. What ended up happening was everyone became a little less ignorant in relation to the "jewish position" on a multitude of things and while I may not be able to answer every "tell me something about judiasm" question, I can definitely field more of them now. Just some food for thought.