My wife’s aunt who was once very Italian and very Catholic married a Jewish man later in life. She went through the Jewish conversion process and is now as Jewish as anyone as I understand it. However, she already has two grown children. I know that anyone born to a Jewish mother is Jewish but what if they were already born at the time of the conversion.
In this case, it seems ridiculous but what if the child was only a few months old when she converted? What if she had two kids only a year apart but the conversion happened between them?
If I understand correctly, only children who are born after the conversion are considered Jewish. Thus, it is possible to have some children who are Jewish and some who technically are not. On the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone claiming that a child born right before a conversion and raised as a Jew is not, for all intents and purposes, Jewish.
Hopefully this’ll do until one of the heavyweights of Jewish law shows up.
Unlikely that any of our Orthodox friends will show up until Sunday, today and tomorrow are holidays (“Festival of Booths”) and Saturday is, of course, Saturday.
I can’t cite chapter and verse, but it is very clear that “a child born of a Jewish mother” means the mther was Jewish at the time of birth. A child born before a conversion would not be Jewish by birth, regardless of the time frame, short or long. A child born right before the conversion but raised Jewish would not be considered Jewish by the Orthodox or Conservative communities, and would have to undergo conversion to be considered Jewish. I’m not sure how the Reform community views this.
And please note that there are different definitions of “Jewish.” We’re talking about “under Jewish law.” Remember that traditional Judaism (Orthodox and Conservative) is a law code, that defines required and prohibited behaviors. Like any law code, it needs to define who is a “citizen”. Thus, certain prayers require ten Jews to be recited, so the laws need to define who can be counted. A non-Jewish visitor would not be counted to get to ten.
That’s the law. Then there’s the practical aspect: How would the others know whether the visitor is Jewish or not? They might just witness behavior – whether the person seems knowledgeable/comfortable in the prayers. They might ask, and they’d almost certainly accept the answer. (Ignoring the silly, like if the visitor were dressed as a Catholic priest, say.) So, if there were a child born shortly before his mother converted (and was ignorant of the time frame), who was raised Jewish, and said he was Jewish, he would almost certainly be believed.
Well I would submit that it is because there is no chapter or verse seeing as how Jewish lineage was always established by the father. So this leads me to the question of when did the mothers lineage come to be used to determine Jewish heritage? It isn’t in the Torah so it would have to be some later date then that. I suspect it is even quite some time after the C.E. began.
Can anyone offer any proof other then recent tradition that the mothers lineage determined that the child was Jewish?
It was a matter of practicality. Until recently, you could never be 100% certain who the father was so the person’s mother became the necessary condition.
Lots of Jewish traditions are that way in that the Orthodox need to do whatever it takes so that they don’t break the laws. For example, there is the verse about don’t boil a kid in its mother’s milk. So you have some milk and you have some meat. The odds are astronomically against a portion of that milk coming from the mother who gave birth to the cow who provided the meat. There is still a chance so it’s best not to have any milk with any meat. That way you can’t even accidentally break the law.
Zev gave another good example. If a Christian friend of his did him a favor, he could repay him by giving him a coupon for a free meal at a pork restaurant. He couldn’t do the same for a non-practicing Jewish friend or for an adopted friend because they could possibly have a Jewish mother.
To answer another question, these days Reform Jews will consider you Jewish if either parent was Jewish. You no longer have to convert if you have a non-Jewish mother.
Finally, I should stress, that a convert (Jew by choice) is considered just as Jewish as someone born a Jew (Jew by blood) if not more so.
Sorry, I was using the term “chapter and verse” figuratively rather than literally. My guess is that the definition of maternal-transmission arose in Talmudic times (say, roughly, 100 - 400 AD), but I’m not near any reference books at the moment.