You need to be a Jew to be a kohen. So you need a Jewish mother and a father who is a kohen.
The daughters of kohens are kinda kohens. Back when the priests were supported by the sacrifices (most of them were eaten by the priestly caste, only a few were actually burned up) only kohens were allowed to eat certain sacrifices. (I’m pretty sure some were also allowed to be eaten by the Levites.) That included the unmarried daughters of kohens as well as their sons. And a daughter of a kohen who married, but then was divorced or widowed without bearing children was also allowed to eat those sacrifices.
My father was a kohen. At Orthodox services only the men speak to the congregation. And at Reform services, they don’t single out the kohens to make some of the blessings. But at Conservative congregations I’ve been given the “kohen’s portion” of public prayers.
But the children of daughters of kohens are not kohens.
It depends on who you ask, especially since several branches of Judaism practice something other than pure matrilineality.
From what I understand, it’s formalized in the Talmud based on writings in the Torah:
The Talmud adduces the law of matrilineal descent from Deuteronomy 7:3–4, which warns that as the consequence of intermarriage “he (the gentile father) will turn away your son (i.e., the child born to your Jewish daughter) from following Me”. Since only “he” (a non-Jewish father) is mentioned and not “she” (a non-Jewish mother), the Talmud concludes that “your (grand)son who comes from an Israelite woman is called ‘your son’ (and warned about in the verse), while your (grand)son who comes from a foreign woman is not called ‘your son’”. Thus, Jewish descent is through the mother.[29]
I’m told by a Jewish friend of mine that a cantor can fill almost all of the duties of a rabbi. His synagogue currently has a cantor as their spiritual leader.
I know even less about cantors than I do about kohens. Is there any special qualification one needs for that role? I tried asking some of these questions on Judaism Reddit not long ago and basically got told I should read Jewish Literacy, which I’ll probably get around to at some point, though just looking at it it looks more intimidating than actually reading the Old Testament front to back.
Not really. A cantor is hired to lead prayers. So, typically, a good voice is valuable. (A good singing voice, as prayers are often sung.) And of course a cantor needs to, you know, know the liturgy. A good cantor also knows a range of tunes for several of the major prayers so they can add some variety and set the tone. But basically, a guy who stands in front of the congregation and says the prayers accurately is doing the basic job.
In my congregation the cantor and the Rabbi work together to structure the services, and some parts could be done by either. But the cantor leads the good music and the Rabbi gives the sermon*.
footnote
A dvar torah isn’t really a sermon, but it’s similar enough for this discussion.
There isn’t a Conservative synagogue in my town. There was like 30 years ago but it folded so they go to the Reform one so it shades a little to the Conservative side and there is a Saturday morning service. The Cantor runs it. (At least that how it was years ago. They may not have kept up with it).
Unlike Catholic Priests, there is no direct path to God via a Rabbi. Rabbis are spiritual advisors and teachers. Other than being licensed to solemnize civil marriages, a Rabbi is not required for ritual life.
This is all very inegalitarian. Some people are extra-special just because of how they are born, and they can’t marry who they want (but the kohain can get divorced himself?). And divorced= ‘fallen’, really?
If ritual purity is about avoiding dead people (and animals), why is it necessary to live in a penthouse and fly around in helicopters? That sounds like just touching the ground would make him impure.
Why is that? Irreligiousness? Low pay?
A more reasonable interpretation is that in a patriarchal society they assumed kids would be raised in their father’s religion, so a non-Jewish mother wouldn’t be a problem. AFAIK this is the reason Muslim men are allowed to marry Jewish or Christian women, but Muslim women are only allowed to marry Muslim men.
And according to genetic studies this did happen in the past, as they show European Jews have more Y chromosomes from the Middle East and more mitochondrial DNA from southern Europe, suggesting significant intermarriage between Jewish men and non-Jewish women.
I highly recommend Jewish Literacy. It is a very big book and appears intimidating at first. But, the longest entry in the book is about three pages. Most entries are only one page. So you can generally learn what you need to know about a specififc topic by reading a total of ten pages.
Perhaps that’s seems more reasonable from our perspective. Doesn’t matter. It’s not the assumption the authors of the Talmud made, and their interpretation is binding. They were closer to Sinai than we are, after all.
There are very small places where modern understanding is allowed to override the rabbis of the past, mostly having to do with protecting life. The talmudists were aware that some children don’t have blood that clots properly. So they ruled that if you’d had two sons who bled to death following circumcision, you didn’t need to circumcise subsequent sons. Today that is interpreted that you are allowed to test for hemophilia and if the baby tests positive, you don’t need to circumcise him. (Source: an Orthodox Jewish friend with a hemophiliac son.)
Orthodox Jewish law is incredibly conservative. If your ancestors followed this rule, you need to follow our at least as strictly. I suppose that’s one reason why conservative and reform Judaism exist.
No one ever claimed Orthodox Judaism was egalitarian. A question you can ask of a modern Conservative or Orthodox congregation is how “egal” they are, as there’s quite a range in practices today. If they don’t say how egalitarian they are in their public-facing materials, they probably aren’t. Reform synagogues default to egalitarian.
But fwiw, Jewish law did allow divorce, and did allow both divorced men and women to remarry, even if there were a few restrictions. That’s a lot more flexible than Catholicism.
As for the penthouse thing, i was wondering that, too. I have no idea how that relates to keeping the child ritually pure. Perhaps it was just a setup for an entertaining movie.
There’s also a theory that the “matrilineal descent” doctrine developed in Judaism because, until DNA testing was invented, maternity was much easier to prove than paternity.
But you might want a Rabbi to provide guidance to your congregation like you might want a lawyer when you are writing a will or buying property. It’s not required, but it can be helpful to have access to an expert who understands the law and what your requirements are. This is why most Jewish communities support a Rabbi.
IIRC it was to prevent any accidental contact with a buried corpse. There are sections of Philly where old cemeteries were basically paved over. Potentially, any section of the ground anywhere on earth could have a body buried in it. To completely avoid this, the kid lived in penthouses and traveled only by helicopter.
To be clear, I assume you’re referring to the theory that they descend from the same polytheistic pre-Jewish group of people, but one whose monotheism crystalized around one of the other proto-Israelite deities?
As I understand it, the theory is that there were multiple priestly families for the different chief gods, and as one God became more and more important to the people over the others, that priestly family grew in power; but this was actually happening to two priestly castes following two of the deities, although obviously they continued to culturally influence each other to the point where much of the mythology is shared; and that’s why they have a temple on a different mountain and a different set of priests?
As opposed to the older theory that matches the stories told by Samaritans themselves, that they are Hebrews who weren’t exiled by the Babylonians?
(Actually, a lot of the transition to monotheism happened during the Babylonian exile, so those two theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive, I suppose…)
Of course, there are also places where new interpretations (one way or the other) have become necessary as a result of technology. The authors of the Talmud never made any rulings on the use of electricity, so modern Jews have to extrapolate that from the rulings they did make about the use of fire.
As for the hypothetical sheltered penthouse child, if you go anywhere on the sidewalks or streets, you’re going to encounter dead animals. I’m not sure exactly how close an encounter it’d need to be to impute ritual impurity, but some of those roadkill critters will be pretty close, like have to step over them close.