"If You Don't Follow My Version of (Insert Name of Faith Here), You Are Not a Believer."

Judaism is not immune to that particular form of religious horseshit.

Israel’s strictly Orthodox minister of religious services said Tuesday that he did not consider Reform Jews to be Jewish, inflaming internal discord over religious issues and underscoring tensions with American Jews, who mostly belong to the more liberal streams of Conservative and Reform Judaism.

“The moment a Reform Jew stops following the religion of Israel, let’s say there’s a problem,” the minister, David Azoulay of the Shas party, said on Army Radio, adding, “I cannot allow myself to call such a person a Jew.”

Same shit, different faith. Sunni v. Shi'a, Catholic v. Protestant, different religions, same tired tune.

Funny thing, though: When the Germans came for the Jews in the `30s and `40s, they didn't separate out Reform Jews, agnostic Jews, or even people who had been of Jewish heritage raised Christian. They stuffed all of them into boxcars and sent them to the camps. When the Spaniards expelled their Jewish population in 1492, even very many of those who adopted Christianity were later pushed out. When the English expelled the Jewish population in 1290, there apparently no religious purity tests. (Forgotten is the fact that the English Crown required Jews to wear special badges.)

Azoulay is full of shit.