Rabbi with a Cause by Howard Burton

Author:Howard Burton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religious Studies, Philosophy, Sociology, Anthropology
Publisher: Open Agenda Publishing
Published: 2021-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

Questions for Discussion:

Do you agree or disagree with the claim that being critical of Israel is completely distinct from being anti-Semitic? Are there times when the line between the two is blurred?

Is there a difference to being “a people”, “a nation” or “a country”? In what ways have those terms changed over the last 50 years? 100 years? 500 years?

III. Who is a Jew?

The logic of self-identification

HB: As you alluded to at the very beginning, you make interesting and, I think, what many members of the Jewish community would consider quite provocative claims about who is a Jew, and how one decides whether or not one is a Jew.

Essentially your argument seems to be: You are a Jew if you think you are a Jew.

What has the reaction been to that, and what do you actually mean by that?

DG: Well, classically, a Jew was defined by the rabbis as anyone born of a Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism under recognized auspices meaning orthodox auspices, when orthodoxy was the only game in town.

Now, interestingly, in the Bible itself, descent goes through the father not the mother. One finds, “the son of David” or “the son of Isaac” or whatever it might be. It goes through the male line.

At some stage, and scholars don’t know exactly when, but they tend to put it in the time of the Maccabean Revolt, when a lot of young men were killed in warfare, it was changed to the maternal line. Hence the expression “A wise man knows his father”—men tend to be more irresponsible, and so forth. So it became the maternal line that was paramount and that’s codified in the Mishnah and in the Talmud. And that has been the law ever since to determine who is a Jew—that and conversion under recognized auspices, meaning orthodox auspices.

I should just mention that it is interesting that in the Talmud there is a prolonged debate about conversion. In the ancient world there were so many choices and people moved very freely between paganism, monotheism and the new religion of Christianity, which only required baptism: in other words, faith not works. Judaism required circumcision if you were a male, together with study and observance of the dietary laws.

But for those people who have really carefully studied the sources, the consensus is that in ancient times—rabbinic times, meaning around the time of Jesus, the two centuries either way—the usual method was to accept somebody and then to teach them.

This varied, as all social issues do, according to context, demography, and other factors. At times the rabbis are very favourable towards conversion, and it’s no surprise that some of the greatest rabbis are of converted origin: Rabbi Akiva and the great Rabbi Hillel, for example, according to the Talmud both had heathen backgrounds.

That would be at a time when life was okay: the Jews weren’t being persecuted or under Roman hostility, the boot, whatever. At other times you get critical remarks about converts and conversion, which have

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