As I mentioned earlier, the laws before the Revelation at Sinai were different than they are now. That’s why Amram was allowed to marry his aunt, an act which was prohibited in the Torah. It could be that at the time no formal “conversion” was necessary as it was after Sinai.
Another possibility is that anyone from Terach’s family were considered “quasi-Jews” during the Patriarchial period. Note that Abraham didn’t ask his servant to find a wife for Isaac who was Jewish… but rather from his own family. Likewise with Isaac’s instructions to Jacob.
With regard to Jacob’s sons, there are two possible answers. The first is that their wives converted before marriage. The second one relies on a Midrash which states that each of the tribes was born together with a twin sister. (Dinah was the only daughter mentioned only because of the later event with her and Shechem. Had that not happened, she might not have been mentioned at all). The Midrash goes on to state that each of Jacob’s sons married a sister from a brother of another mother (Jacob’s twelve sons came from four different wives). Marrying a paternal half-sister was permitted pre-Sinai.
For a more secular answer to that question, I’d reccomend the work of Dr. Shaye Cohen, who, along with a lot of other scholars, argues that the principal of matrilineal descent didn’t exist in Judaism until sometime in the Second Temple period. If you accept that, then the above Midrash is a post-facto rationalization by the writers of the midrash, who assumed that existing laws of descent existed in the past.
And how does Joseph fit in? We know from Genesis, he didn’t marry his sister, but instead the daughter of an Egyptian priest.
Again, the Midrash attempts to explain this as well and again, there are two possible answers offered: one is that Asenath converted and the other is that she was the daughter of Shechem and Dinah.
Truthfully, of these, the second answer doesn’t sit very well with me, since it then involves a whole backstory of how she got to Egypt to begin with. My personal preference is the first or even the idea that pre-Sinai, no formal “conversion” was needed.
I don’t want to start a debate about Jews for Jesus (a group I don’t even like), but I am a little confused.
You say the founder Moishe Rosen is not Jewish. But I thought there was no argument that his maternal grandmother was Jewish. (If Rosen is lying about his family history this is moot.)
So it would seem that he has to be Jewish even if the he is preaching for fellow Jews to violate parts of the 613 mitzvot and blurring the lines between Christianty and Judaism. He (and the group) might be giving false teaching but how does that effect whether he is a Jew? For example, Jesus really blurred the lines with his teaching and his teachings but I don’t think there is any question that Jesus is a Jew, right?
From the rest of the thread I have the impression that once you are Jewish there is nothing you can do to no longer be Jewish, so I am little confused as why you would say that Rosen is not Jewish despite the nature of his teachings. But maybe there is something I am overlooking.
It doesn’t. I wasn’t aware that his maternal grandmother was Jewish. If so, then he is Jewish. That doesn’t, however, detract from the deceitfulness of the group.
zev, you know that this is nutty. Even by this standard:
I am personally aware of the effects of this last group in a variety of ways, so I am extremely sympathetic to this argument. But while the Nazi race laws were themselves as nutty as Hitler’s nightmares, even they did not go as far as you’re going. It is uncomfortably similar to the one drop of blood test that racists used to apply to blacks.
It’s also scientifically iffy. Many geneticists agree that it can be proven that every single one of us alive today is descended from any given individual far enough in the past. And that “far enough” isn’t all that far.
The same genetic math will show conclusively that everyone in the world today must be descended from a Jewish woman. Ergo, we are all Jewish. Ergo, you must treat everyone as Jewish.
But this is truly nutty, nutty beyond even your statement.
There has to be a line drawn somewhere.
Now I’m a nutty absolutist. I contend that Judaism is a religion. If you abandon it you are no longer Jewish. There is no such thing as a Jewish atheist; all there can be are non-practicing Jews. There most certainly cannot be Jewish Christians or Jewish Hindus. Dex is flat out wrong in his contention, in my view.
Most people, I’m sure, fall somewhere between our extremes. I think, naturally, that my extreme has a sounder rationale behind it than yours, but I realize it’s a minority view. But you perhaps need to review your extreme and decide just how many Jewish mothers are needed to screw in that proverbial light bulb.
Agreed - the Nazis only cared as far as your grandparents went. I didn’t mean to draw an exact analogy - just to further emphasize the point that those who seek to escape their Jewish identity are often dragged back to it - sometimes by the very people who don’t care that you’ve renounced your Jewish identity to begin with.
Hmm, well, it is possible. From the point of view of the Roman Catholic Church, once a catholic, always a catholic too. I might be an atheist, but in the eyes of the church I’m just an erring catholic. Granted, it doesn’t make much of a diffeence for me, but the Jewish view doesn’t make much of a difference for a Jew converted to catholicism, either.
No. It’s not enough to be descended from a Jewish woman. You must descend from her in female line. It would reduce significantly the number of applicants.
Correct. And as it happens, there are some special genetic tools available to trace the female line. Using those tools, it’s been determined that humanity’s last common ancestor in the exclusively female line would have been 150,000 years ago. Since Judaism is less than 150,000 years old, this implies that not all humans are decended from a Jewish woman. The same sort of genetic testing could probably determine what proportion of humans alive today are, in fact, Jewish by descent, but I’m not aware that such a study has been done.
Hi. I’m a Jewish atheist. I am the daughter of two Jewish survivors.
I am a Jew culturally and spiritually. I believe in the ethical core that is specific to Judiasm. I believe the Jewish culture (eastern European, spicifcally) is my culture- the food, the music, the traditions.
When I go to synagogue I derive extreme pleasure from almost meditative feeling I get from the various prayers. I love doing rituals that have been going on for hundreds of years. I believe there is value in ritual and prayer in of itself, even if I don’t believe anyone is listening. It is my community in so many ways taht go beyond a belief in G-D.
Judiasm is a culture in addition to a religion unlike othe religions (ever see a catholic cookbook?). My parents had more in common culturally with Brittish and Greek Jews than the Polish Christians in their hometown.
Reconstructionist Jusdiasm addresses the spiritual and ethical nature of Judiasm.
There’s a laughably fallacious assumption in that argument. Line of descent != individual person. Even more so with tribal cultures that make a point of marrying within the tribe.
However, Exapno Mapcase, I tend to agree with your point on unknown Jewish mothers.
