by LurkerIn the comment thread on the
Rotem bill post, an anonymous commenter has been arguing that for the sake of "Jewish unity", the State of Israel ought to accept all Jewish denominations as equally legitimate. Specifically, she is demanding that any person who converted to Judaism through any of these organizations (e.g., the Reform Movement) should be accepted as a Jew for all legal purposes. She accuses the State of Israel of destroying "Jewish unity" by not accepting these converts as Jews.
Since this issue has nothing to do with the Rotem bill (which is the subject of the post in question), but is still a very important point of Jewish public concern, I have decided to respond in a separate post.
For thousands of years, the mainstream of the Jewish people maintained a unified tradition regarding who is regarded as a Jew, based upon matrilineal descent. Then, 27 years ago, the Reform movement -- which itself had come into existence only a few decades earlier -- came along, and decided to unilaterally jettison those traditions, and create their own, new rules. In particular, they decided to dispense with the universally accepted requirement that the mother be Jewish [CCAR, Report of the Committee on Patrilineal Descent, adopted March 15, 1983].
In the exact same way, the Jewish people had millenia-old unified standards for the manner in which a non-Jew may be accepted into the Jewish people. This includes immersion in a mikveh, circumcision for men, and acceptance of mitzvot. Here too, the Reform movement unilaterally decided to jettison all these requirements [CCAR Yearbook 3 (1893), 73–95; American Reform Responsa (ARR), no. 68, at 236–237, which specifies that converts may be admitted
"without any initiatory rite, ceremony, or observance whatever".]
Thus, it was the Reform movement,
not the Orthodox, who broke ranks with the rest of the Jewish people by unilaterally abandoning all existing rules and standards that the Jewish people had maintained for centuries. To then follow up this unilateral act by demanding that the rest of the Jewish people now accept their own, newly-invented defintion of a "Jew" is outrageous. To make this demand in the name of "Jewish unity" -- after they themselves
shattered Jewish unity by discarding the Jewish people's existing standards, and adopting their own, new, private ones in their place -- is the absolute height of hypocrisy.
Suppose that I and some of my friends were to establish our own, new Jewish organization, called the "Lox and Bagels Club". Suppose further that we were to decide to adopt our own, private organizational definition of who we consider to be a Jew: Let's say that we resolve that we consider anyone who likes to eat lox and bagels to be a "Jew". Would we then be within our rights to demand that the State of Israel adopt our new definition for legal purposes?
If your answer is that our hypothetical Jewish organization should have no right to make any such demand, then why is it acceptable for the Reform Movement to do so? Why should the rest of the Jewish people be expected to accept a brand new definition of "Jew" that violates the Jewish people's fundamental religious traditions, and that a new movement simply made up only a few years ago?
Perhaps you think there's a difference between my Lox and Bagels Club and the Reform Movement. Maybe you would argue that the Reform Movement has a large number of members, whereas my Lox and Bagels Club doesn't -- and that the Jewish people should therefore accept the Reform movement's "new Jews", but not the Lox and Bagels Club's "new Jews".
I would draw your attention, then, to the fact that there are other Jewish organizations who are also vying for recognition, and who have a rather sizable membership. For example, there is Messianic Judaism, aka "Jews for Jesus". They, too, have demanded that the State of Israel and the Jewish people accept them as a legitimate Jewish denomination, with the authority to perform conversions. (Their criteria for conversion, not surprisingly, center around the acceptance of Jesus as one's lord and savior.) Should their demands be accepted too, in the name of "Jewish unity"?
Most Jews -- Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform -- would answer: "But that's different! Those people believe in Jesus, so they're not Jews. That's crossing a red line: Jewish tradition has refused to accept Jesus for the last two thousand years! These people can't come along and violate our fundamental religious tradtions, and then demand that we accept them as legitimate!"
Hmm. Sound familiar?
Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד
