Who Is a Jew?

 Dear Rabbi, 

I will comment on next week's parshah later but I take a tremendous exception to something you said yesterday during your sermon. At one point you are placing Noah and Abraham in the same category with their obedience to G-d. While it is true that they both accepted G-d's command to do something (Noah and his ark, Abraham and his willingness to take Isaac as a sacrifice) there is something that separates them that I think you missed in putting them together. Noah was not a Jew. It was Abraham that those of the Jewish faith derive our lineage. 

Take Noah. He is minding his own business and G-d choses him, because of  his righteousness, to build the ark and carry on mankind after the flood will destroy everything else. Do we hear one word from Noah as to why he is being asked what he is called upon to do? A one man job to build this enormous ship and then go about gathering animals to place in the ark not to mention the maintenance of all this once this goes into effect, should have elicited some questions of what are you talking about G-d? 

Now take Abraham and what I think makes him the first Jew. He does not accept everything blindly. He questions the wisdom of some of G-d's decisions. (Sodom being a prime example.) Yet when it comes to the most onerous command he is asked to perform, the killing of his beloved son Isaac, there is not one word of protest. He could have at least said, take me instead, leave the boy alone, but there is nothing but the silence, which is deafening. Loyalty to the cause is honorable but there have to be limits. That is why when you asked me how I might make sense of the Akedah, I surmised that Abraham had to know somehow that G-d would not make him go through with it.  

Shalom

Mordecai

Dear Mordecai,

To me, your response to the Akedah is the answer: "I surmised that Abraham had to know somehow that G-d would not make him go through with it." This reading is supported by verse 5 - "The boy and I will go up there; we will worship and we will return to you.” Otherwise, Abraham is a liar. In any event, they did not return together, but that doesn't mean he lied. It just means he didn't anticipate Isaac's reaction. 

That Abraham was the first Jew and Noah - or Adam for that matter - was not is a good reminder. I may have blurred that line. What they have in common is obedience to command. Where Abraham exceeds Noah is his ability and willingness to dialogue with G-d. Noah is simply a doer.

From what you write, I can see that what you hold dear in the Jew - and thus in yourself - is the willingness to question, the willingness to dialogue and to speak. Noah possesses none of these skills. 

I wonder what the Akedah would mean or look like if Abraham had said, "Take me instead." There must be a midrash like that somewhere.

Shalom

Rabbi

Dear Rabbi,

This week's parshah  leads me to asking how do you become a Jew? The response that is usually given to me is that you are a Jew if your mother was Jewish. Now if we accept the premise that Abraham was the first Jew and that with that so was his wife Sarah, Isaac then by definition also becomes a Jew. According to what we have read, Abraham and Sarah only have one child and it is a boy. 

In this week's second aliyah the following exchange takes place between Abraham and his servant:

3And I will adjure you by the Lord, the G-d of the heaven and the G-d of the earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose midst I dwell.

From what I was led to believe, Abraham did not want his son to marry someone from people that were pagans. Abraham was the first Jew because he believed in one G-d and he did not want his son to move away from what he was being taught by his father. So if we go along with this premise, why did he tell his servant to go back to Abraham's homeland, to get a wife for his son? He moved away because his own people, including allegedly his father, were idol worshippers and Abraham could not tolerate that. This brings be back to my original question. What makes Rebecca a suitable person for Isaac? There is no mention of what religious belief Rebecca had before she went back with the servant and there is no mention of any sort of "conversion" of Rebecca into the Jewish religion. She is asked by her family if she wants to leave, and she immediately says yes. Not one question about what lied ahead for her is asked.

I am also puzzled by the sixth aliyah in that to me it seems Abraham has a double standard when it comes to where someone should come from to marry into his family when it says:

1And Abraham took another wife and her name was Keturah.                    

2And she bore him Zimran and Jokshan and Medan and Midian and Jishbak and Shuah.               

3And Jokshan begot Sheba and Dedan, and the sons of Dedan were Ashurim, Letushim, and Leumim.                     

4And the sons of Midian [were] Ephah and Epher and Enoch and Abida and Elda'ah; all these were the sons of Keturah.

Where does Keturah come from? Is she Jewish? Are Abraham's other children Jewish? Why are they all sent away? I think I have asked enough questions for now and I will wait for a response.

Shalom,

Mordecai

Dear Mordecai,

This is certainly an important and timely issue. Who is a Jew is one of the most contentious issues today. You mention the rabbinic definition that the progeny of a Jewish mother is a Jew. I have heard various reasons for why this is. I don’t know if these reasons are true. What I heard is 1) you can always verify the mother 2) many Jewish women were raped during the Roman conquest of Judea, and separating these mothers from their children would have been cruel. #1 no longer obtains as we have paternity tests. And this led one of my professors at the Seminary to suggest that we should only say someone is a Jew if both their mother and father are Jews.

One scholar who has written about this subject is Shaye J.D. Cohen. For the rabbis, the child of a Jewish man but not a Jewish mother technically must convert, but they are not treated like a true convert. The understanding is that they have one foot in the door already.

You mention conversion. Conversion is not a possibility in the Torah. Only with Ruth does it become possible. A better example would be Moses since his son Gershom appears to be a Jew, and Zipporah is clearly not.

One of the reasons I left the Reform movement was because they affirmed patrilineal descent in a 1984 ruling.

If you study the passage of the encounter of Rebecca with Abraham’s servant, you will see many parallels to the scene in which Abraham welcomes the three angels. The repetition of the words “quick”, “run”, and “hasten” suggest that Rebecca has Abraham’s quality of lovingkindness. This is what qualifies her to be not just a suitable person for Isaac but the most significant of the matriarchs. She’s also more significant than Isaac, I would argue.

You raise an excellent point regarding verse 3. The Canaanites were idol worshippers but so was Nahor and his family in Haran. What’s the difference between the two. The commentators address this. Two answers that I find compelling are 1) the Canaanites were especially extreme idol-worshippers and 2) Because the Canaanites lived in the land, a woman from that stock would always be in the presence of her family making leaving her idolatrous ways impossible. Therefore, even though Rebecca lived among idolaters, too, she had a better chance of being a monotheist away from her home and family – just like Abraham – in Canaan.

There does seem to be a double standard in that Abraham married Keturah and had children with her. Apparently, simply being Abraham’s child is not sufficient for succeeding him in the covenant. Abraham’s goal was to make sure that Isaac’s progeny would succeed Isaac, so what was okay for Abraham would not have been okay for Isaac.

Shalom,

Rabbi 

Dear Rabbi,

I had to write you to correct what I asked as to the sixth aliyah. I now know that Keturah is actually Hagar, the wife Abraham married before he and Sarah had Isaac. If I go with an Orthodox reason for the why the new name I get the response that  the new name is because she repented from her not good ways and started a new life as a better person.

I don't buy that because I cannot understand what she did wrong in the first place. She is Sarah's madi and is told to go with Abraham to have a child. She does as she is told and a son, Ishmael is born. Are you going to tell me that she did not raise Ishmael properly? If that is so, why doesn't Abraham deserve any of the blame?

Abraham seems to like Keturah/Hagar but I still do not know if she has "converted" or whether any of the children they produce are Jewish. If they are not, why is that so? I again am asking many questions that go back to my original inquiry of what makes a Jew. 

Shalom,

Mordecai

Dear Mordecai,

Yes, I believe I’ve heard that the Midrash teaches that Hagar is Keturah. That she is restored to him. Without doubt, your objections cannot withstand scrutiny. Indeed, Hagar looked down upon Sarei and Ishmael mistreated Ishmael, but her running away and her banishment seem like harsh punishments. Abraham, I believe, feels remorse throughout his life about this. See what he says in 17:18: “Oh, that Ishmael might live by your favor.”

I believe I clarified the conversion issue in the last email. Conversion just doesn’t apply in the Torah world. The question, What makes a Jew? is deeper than that, is philosophical. One way to address this is to consider characters like Ishmael and Esau as Hebraic, though not Jewish. This became important to the Zionist, Micah Yosef Berdichevsky, who believed we should redeem characters like these, especially because they demonstrated martial skill. 

Shalom,

Rabbi

Dear Rabbi,

Some of your reply confuses me more than when I asked the question. As to conversion of someone who has a Jewish father and a non Jewish mother, that the child has to convert or is it the wife. What if someone is circumcised by a mohel, does this child still have to "convert" as well or does the mohel have this authority? I still am confused about Rebecca. I will leave my comments about Rebecca until next week because I believe what she did with respect to Esau and Jacob does not fit into what I am asking this week. But, is Jacob a Jew if Rebecca is not a Jew? Since you brought up Moses's son Gershom, what makes him a Jew?  

Shalom,

Mordecai

Dear Mordecai,

Let’s cut through this confusion. First, though, let me answer the questions you raise.

• If the mother is non-Jewish, the mother must convert before the birth, or the baby has to be converted after the birth.
• If the child is circumcised by a mohel, then he has to have a hattafat dam brit once the parents have decided he will be converted.

I think where we’re missing each other is around terminology, specifically the word “Jew.” You know as well as I that the word “Jew” never appears in the Book of Genesis let alone the Torah. Jews are members of the tribe of Judah who lived in the Southern Kingdom after the Kingdom of Solomon split. What we’re really talking about is the religious meaning of being a Jew, which is a matter for the torah she’balpeh (oral Torah). For the rabbis, of course, all the patriarchs and matriarchs have to be Jews and Hagar, Esau, and Ishmael cannot be. Ultimately, what they’re referring to is the covenant. Being a Jew is being party to the covenant. Apparently being married to one of the patriarchs, all of whom covenanted with G-d, automatically brings you into the covenant. 

Shalom

Rabbi

Dear Rabbi,

I deliberately waited to comment as to Esau in this email, which confuses me even more. Ishmael's mother was Hagar and I think you would agree that she would not be considered a Jew. Rebecca gave birth to Esau yet you equate him the same as Ishmael with the term "Hebraic". What do you mean by that. Is it Abraham and Isaac being the fathers? If so your turning away from the Reformed interpretation makes no sense to me. 

Shalom,

Mordecai

Dear Mordecai,

Yes, there is a difference between Ishmael and Esau, and the difference weakens my argument that you need both parents to be part of the covenant for the child to be part of it too – that is to say, for the child to be a Jew.

The term “Hebraic” is something I employ from Zionist literature, primarily Micah Yosef Berdichevsky, who tries to expand the notion of what being Jewish means. Interestingly, Berdichevsky formulated his Zionism with Reform Judaism in mind. His Zionism, therefore, resembles Reform Judaism in its affirmation of patrilineal descent but rejects it since Reform Judaism denied the return to Zion. I suppose that I allow for a concept of patrilineal descent in my Zionism but not my religion. The state of Israel operates the same way according to the Law of Return. 

Shalom, 

Rabbi