I think the term Jew is sported by descendants of people who practice Judaism. They afford the label to give themselves an identity. Judaism is a religion, Jew is more accepted as an ethnic group, but that is false. There are different ethnicities that practice Judaism, the shortened term for them is Jews. The ethnicity that people are looking for would be Hebrew, specifically descendants of the tribes of Benjamin or Israel. Those two tribes are the only intact tribes we know about. The other ten tribes were captured by the Babylonians, taken to Babylon and enslaved. Where they want or what happened to them is lost, hence "the lost tribes". The same fate would have befallen the last two tribes, if not for the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus the Great. He sent the Israelites and Benjamites back to their land to rebuild. End of history lesson.
Oh so because there are atheist Jews, Judaism is no longer a religion?
I think the term Jew is sported by descendants of people who practice Judaism. They afford the label to give themselves an identity. Judaism is a religion, Jew is more accepted as an ethnic group, but that is false. There are different ethnicities that practice Judaism, the shortened term for them is Jews. The ethnicity that people are looking for would be Hebrew, specifically descendants of the tribes of Benjamin or Israel. Those two tribes are the only intact tribes we know about. The other ten tribes were captured by the Babylonians, taken to Babylon and enslaved. Where they want or what happened to them is lost, hence "the lost tribes". The same fate would have befallen the last two tribes, if not for the destruction of Babylon by Cyrus the Great. He sent the Israelites and Benjamites back to their land to rebuild. End of history lesson.
Judaism is a religion, sure. But it's primarily an ethnicity. You don't need to practice any religion to be Jewish.