WHO IS A JEW?

Who is a Jew? Conventional wisdom is straightforward about it: One’s Jewishness is determined by either of the two criteria: the ethnic criterion and/or the religious criterion. End of story.

Paradoxically our conventional wisdom is wrong. It takes too much for granted. A perfectly Jewish-looking individual with a perfectly Jewish name, like, say, Shmuel Ben-David, is not automatically eligible for such an identification. Technically speaking, if his maternal grandmother wasn’t Jewish, and unless some Jewish Orthodox rabbi had converted his mother (or him)  to Judaism, he may not be formally recognized as a Jew... unless he should appeal to common sense, regarding his ethnicity, and at the same time successfully conceal the awkward fact concerning his non-Jewish maternal grandmother, which makes him ineligible for Yiddishkeit.

In other words, legally speaking, the two formal criteria of Jewishness are matrilineal heredity, or properly established religious affiliation. Ethnicity, in this case, has very little to do with it. Moreover, a proper Jew's mother, who makes him an uncontestable Jew in the eyes of the Jewish Law, does not have to be ethnically Jewish herself!

This does not mean of course that our unfortunate Shmuel Ben-David will be treated unsympathetically by the traditional old-school Jews, whose very practical criterion of Jewishness is whether such a person could have been suspected as a Jew in Nazi Germany and sent to Auschwitz as a result. Yet formalities cannot be overlooked in some cases, and the ensuing paradox cannot always be swept under the rug. So let us return to the title question again, and perhaps again.

Halakhically, there are two and only two ways of how a person can be a Jew. One, the most natural one is to be the child of an undisputedly Jewish mother. The other one is through a religious conversion, which meets the rigid criteria of legitimacy imposed by the qualified religious authority, normally consisting of Orthodox rabbis, members of the religious court called the Beth Din.

This short set of two strict criteria sounds simple enough, but in reality the situation with the second one is a subject of major, still ongoing controversy. By now we know that certain self-proclaimed Jews are treated as impostors by the State of Israel, and also, that there are Beth Dins and “beth dins,” the latter, of the non-orthodox denominations not recognized as legitimate by the Orthodox rabbis especially in Israel where they hold great political power.

Now, the following excerpt from Wikipedia’s article Who is a Jew? is important as an additional reference item:

“Who is a Jew?” is a basic question about Jewish identity  and considerations of Jewish self-identification. The question has gained particular prominence in connection with several high-profile legal cases in Israel since 1962, and in 2009 there was a prominent and controversial court case (regarding admissions to Jewish Free Schools) in the United Kingdom, about this question.

The definition of who is a Jew varies, according to whether it is being considered by Jews on the basis of normative religious statutes and self-identification, or by non-Jews for their own purposes. Because Jewish identity can include characteristics of an ethnicity, a religion, and citizenship, the definition of who is a Jew has varied depending on whether a religious, sociological, or ethnic aspect was being considered.
According to the Halakhah, the oldest normative definition used by Jews for self-identification, a person is matrilineally a Jew by birth, or he becomes one through conversion to Judaism. Adherence to this definition has been challenged since the emergence of the Karaite sect, emergence of modern groups in Judaism since the 19^th century, and the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. Issues that have been raised reflect:
---Child’s non-Jewish mother: i.e. whether a child born of a non-Jewish mother should be considered Jewish through the father’s Jewish identity.
---Conversion: i.e. what process of conversion, other than the normative orthodox procedure, is considered valid.
---Historical loss of Jewish identity: i.e. whether a person’s or a group’s actions (such as a conversion to a different religion) or circumstances in his/her or community's life (such as being unaware of Jewish parents) should affect his or her Jewish status.
---Diaspora identity: identity of Jews among themselves, and by non-Jews throughout the Jewish Diaspora.
---Claim to Israeli citizenship: the examination of the three previous issues in the context of the Basic Laws of Israel.

So, has the question of who is a Jew been answered to anybody’s satisfaction? I guess it will never be, like so many other questions rising around and within res Judaica.

(A discussion of other thorny issues continues in my entry Abraham Versus Moses, published on my blog on May 7^th, 2012.)