Ask the Rabbi: How Does Jewish Tradition Define Who Is a Jew?

Question: Many years ago, I fell in love with a Jewish girl. I know, sounds like an old story, and I suppose it is, however we had a child, who by law and tradition is Jewish and so are three of my grandchildren. My status is complicated, I could go through the conversion process, but at my age, 67, I doubt I could learn Hebrew, or I could just accept that most Orthodox Jews will not acknowledge me as part of the tribe. The problem is the rest of my family; I have a loyalty and duty to them also. However, I know that when the enemies of the Jews are in charge in any part of the world that my technical distinction as not of the tribe would not make a difference. So, in simple terms, does being called Jew by your enemies make you a Jew?

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Semper Fi,

S.A.L.

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Answer: The question of Jewish identity is obviously fraught with emotion for all of those involved. As this question, or something very like it, has been posed several times in response to the inauguration of this column, I’ll try to deal with it here.

The simple and direct answer to the first part of the question is that a person is a member of the Jewish nation if he or she is descended from a Jewish mother.

The primary source for this law is the Talmud (Qiddushin 76b), and it is codified in the Rambam’s Hilchoth Issurei Bi’a. The reason for this boils down to the fact that it is very easy to determine who the mother of a particular child is, whereas in the days before DNA tests it was much more difficult to be certain of the father.

A person who is born into the Jewish people remains Jewish, regardless of his level (we’ll use the masculine pronoun for convenience) of observance or involvement in Judaism. It is an ethnic identity, in that sense no different from Greek, Italian, or Chinese nationality. He may not be a very good Jew, in the eyes of the Torah, but his identity is his, and the Torah remains his birthright.

This matter was never in question among us until the twin occurrences, both in the 19th Century, of the mass assimilation into Western culture which began with the Napoleonic Wars and the abolition of ghettos in Europe, and the rise of the racialist doctrine of anti-Semitism (as opposed to the earlier opposition to Judaism of certain Christian and Muslim authorities). This, of course, reached its zenith with the so-called Nuremberg Laws of 1935 in Germany, in which the National Socialist regime declared “Jewish” anybody with a single Jewish grandparent.

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The resulting persecution had some absolutely heartbreaking consequences, such as the case (well known at the time) of a German woman with a single Jewish grandfather who was thrown into concentration camps, somehow survived the war, and decided that if she was “Jewish,” then she may as well move to the new state of Israel. Where, of course, she promptly discovered that she wasn’t Jewish. She had absolutely no interest in converting to Judaism (or any other religion), and the poor woman went mad.

However, like any other nationality, there is a provision for naturalization which we conventionally call “conversion” to Judaism.

The technical term for a person who converts to Judaism is gér tzedeq, more or less literally a “righteous sojourner,” colloquially reduced simply to gér (a female convert is called a giyoreth). This is to distinguish the term from gér toshav, a “resident alien”: a non-Jew who desires to live within the Jewish community and who therefore freely accepts on himself the Seven Commandments which are delineated in Talmudic sources, derived from Biblical verses, as having been incumbent on the sons of Noach, and therefore on all humanity. The process of becoming a gér tzedeq is called giyyur.

A gér tzedeq takes on himself all of the duties and responsibilities, the full “yoke of the Torah,” as we term it, which are incumbent on the native-born. For this reason, a lengthy instruction period is necessary, and a great deal of study, under the guidance of a competent rabbinical court, a béyth din. The task is arduous, and it is deliberately so; we do not proselytize, we do not possess any secret doctrine which one must believe or accept in order to be “saved.”

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People who are not Jewish are perfectly fine exactly as they are, members of whatever nations they happen to belong to. We desire to live in peace with everybody.

Furthermore, we have no desire or need to create more non-observant Jews; if you wish to join our nation, you must accept and practice our national culture, the culture of Torah with its 613 commandments.

The status of a gér tzedeq is, for virtually all purposes, the same as that of a native-born member of the Jewish nation, as the Torah tells us repeatedly (cf. e.g. Exodus XII, 49; Leviticus XVI, 29; Numbers IX, 14, inter alia.)

Having said that, there are the Seven Commandments (or mitzvoth) that are (still) incumbent on all the nations of the world. The Torah terms those people who faithfully follow these mitzvoth tzaddiqei ummoth ha‘olam, “the righteous ones of the world’s nations,” and assures them a portion of reward in the World to Come (Sanhedrin XIII, 1).

So, in cursory form and in no particular order, here are those Seven Mitzvoth …

  1. The prohibition of idolatry. The Hebrew term here translated “idolatry,” ‘avoda zara, literally means “strange service” and is defined by the Talmud as belief that anyone or anything can benefit or harm you other than G-d alone. G-d has no sons, partners, or intermediaries between Him and His Creation.
  2. The prohibition of bloodshed (shëfichuth damim): One can’t kill people, and for bënei Noach this explicitly includes abortion.
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  1. The prohibition of expropriating another’s property (gezel): Don’t commit theft or robbery.
  1. The prohibition of cursing G-d’s Name (birkath Ha-Shem): Means pretty much what it sounds like. G-d runs the world, and He runs it with perfect justice, whether or not we are allowed to see the workings of that perfect justice. Cursing G-d gets you nowhere.
  1. Prohibition of sexual improprieties (gilluy ‘arayoth): The term literally means “revealing what should be hidden” and includes all of the things you might imagine it includes.
  1. Eating a limb from a living creature (‘ever min hechai): All animals are available to bënei Noach for food purposes (unlike Jews, for whom certain animals are forbidden), but they must be treated and slaughtered humanely.
  1. The establishment of courts to deal with those who transgress the above six. Human beings have to pursue justice in the world.

If you don’t see yourself undergoing all the rigors of giyyur (67 is not too old, but you need to make up your own mind), I recommend the Seven Mitzvoth.

If you are interested, let me know, and I can put you in touch with people who can help you explore them further.

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