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Question
I am in my 40's. I come from a Jewish father and Catholic mother. At that
time my father wanted his daughters raised Jewish but was told we were not
Jews by a Rabbi because of the mother and his part in our creation did not
count. So began his long hate with his own people.
We began our education into Catholicism (which I have no belief in) but
this was not the end of our Jewishness question. My Orthodox Jewish
grandmother at every chance would teach us along with my Jewish cousins.
She would tell my sisters and I that no matter what anyone said we were
Jews. She died when I was 8.
All my life I've heard the same argument of the Rabbi and my grandmother.
The question always came up when they looked at me or heard my last name.
Some Jews would say I am Jewish and some Jews say I am not.
Now I have 3 daughters who want to know if their grandfather is Jewish why
aren't they? I can't convert because my father gets angry and yells "How
can you convert to what you are, do I have to take a DNA test to prove you
are my children". He's just happy that I teach them the little I know
about the reasons behind holidays like Purim, Passover, etc..
My question is, am I wrong to teach my daughters anything about Judaism?
Should I deny that part that my father is as the Rabbi so long ago put it
or listen to the words of my grandmother who as orthodox as she was would
not accept me as anything else but Jewish?
Answer
There are those who see Judaism
uniquely as maternal in descent, "matriarchal descent" as you noted. This
follows Jewish law of the past 2000 years. It does seem that before then it
was "patriarchal descent" and we don't really know why there was a change.
My own feeling, based on historical material of several specialist, is that
the Rabbis of the first 200 years of the Common Era (0-200 CE or AD) saw
how many children were being born of rape, slavery and all forms of sexual
abuse of Jewish women. In an act of compassion, and working within the
Roman concept of citizenship, they made the law accept the child of a
Jewish mother as a Jew by birth. So, what began as compassion and
inclusiveness and leniency "then" has made a situation today that they
could never contemplate - an open society in which Jews could marry
non-Jews - a complicated situation if not a crisis for the family.
There are Rabbis today, mostly Orthodox or Traditional, who feel that if a
child is born to a woman who is - on her mother's side - the descendent of
10 generations of mothers, even if raised as Catholics, nonetheless
"Jewish" by birth. I would think that we would have to respect at some time
the decision of a mother to raise her daughters as Catholic - no matter
what the Rabbis might say!
The Reform and Reconstructionist movements, the more liberal movements,
have opted to include both matriarchal and patriarchal descent, although
the child must be raised uniquely as a Jew. They didn't become so liberal
as to provide for a child to be raised as "both" religions. If the child is
baptized or taken to church, even if also "raised as a Jew" is considered
to be Christian by even the liberal movements. One then understands how the
more traditional movements would not accept such a bi-cultural child as Jewish.
In my experience, often the Jewish father was very upset about the reaction
of the Jewish community because of his own family's response, and being
unable to lash out and criticize them, it was easier to lash out at the
Jewish People or the Rabbi. Sometimes the anger or hatred of the Jewish
community began then or perhaps the roots were there earlier and account
for dating out of the Jewish community.
Let's also understand that in the 50's, inter-faith marriages were still
relatively few in number and conversion of the Gentile was more often the
case. From that decade until now, the rate of conversion has dropped and
the rate of interfaith marriages, based upon where one lives, is roughly
30% in urban centers and in some states in the US as high as 90%. Perhaps
that is why the Reform and Reconstructionist movements may have tried to
become more inclusive.
Your father has some ideas that others have. There are Jews who feel that
it is a blood issue, and they refuse to accept converts to Judaism because
they weren't "born" into the Jewish People. Similarly, your father believes
that he has given you Jewish blood and no one can take it away. In both
cases, I respectfully disagree; Judaism is a religion, a community of faith
and identity, and it has nothing to do with "Jewish blood."
If your daughters are truly searching to become Jewish, you and they need
to have the above facts and information in hand and consider it seriously.
We would welcome you. If you wish to be Jewish and identified as a Jew, I'd
urge you to speak with a Rabbi directly and deal with the details with
him/her. Please let me know the closest communities/cities to you and I am
certain to know the right Rabbi to whom to refer you for a personal
relationship.
Whenever I dealt with such a circumstance - and by the 80's and 90's it was
very frequent - I would urge a visit to the mikveh, the Jewish equivalent
of "immersion" or full body baptism; it is the ancestor of what
Christianity created as baptism. In this fashion, there could be no
question in the minds of anyone as to the authenticity of identity as a
Jew. It isn't as much a conversion as a confirmation of Jewish identity.
I should add that if one doesn't have a solid Jewish education, tragically
the beauty and depth of our tradition remains hidden, and after studying
for 50 plus years, I still don't know everything or enough! It is a
lifetime of study, but there is certainly a minimum amount that ought to be
required. :-)
Best Wishes,
Rabbi Barry Dov Lerner
Foundation for Family Education (FFFE)
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