As Jews around the world celebrate Passover, a holiday of redemption from bondage and the birth of the Jewish nation, I ponder the age-old question of who is a Jew? This is not a simple question and there is no correct answer, for as the joke goes where there are two Jews there are at least three opinions. Before we can even try to answer the who part of the question we have to answer the what. What is a Jew? Is a Jew a member of a race, religion or nation or all of the above?
I reflect on this issue because Passover, despite its traditions and nuanced observances is the ultimate “national” holiday. A tribe of 70 people immigrants to another land maintains its ethnic/tribal identity as it grows into a substantial minority and eventually is persecuted for it. Ultimately, this ethnic minority seeks and achieves its freedom, independence and return to their ancestral homeland.
On the other hand, this independence culminates in the nation accepting a religious mandate and embracing all of its laws. From that point on there is very little peaceful coexistence within the nation as different factions vie to define what exactly a Jew is. Judaism has a storied history of factionalism, religious differences, persecution and redemption. Throughout its history came fundamental changes that shook the foundations of its birth, like the end of animal sacrifice after the destruction of the Second Temple, until then the focal point of religious observance.
Yet one common denominator has been defining Judaism for over 2,000 years, hatred of Jews. For reasons I am little qualified to expand on, Jews have always been hated and persecuted by someone. In the modern era the Holocaust became the defining moment in Jewish history. The birth of the modern State of Israel is often cited as a result of it. President Obama was excoriated for alluding to the Holocaust/birth of Israel connection in an address to the Muslim world in Cairo shortly after he took office. Israel, he needed to be reminded, was a nation thousands of years before Muhammad’s birth.
Today though, it is the State of Israel that clouds up the question of who is a Jew. On the one hand the Law of Return grants anyone with one Jewish grandparent the right to automatic Israeli citizenship. On the other it endows the Orthodox Rabbinate with a monopoly over religion, primarily in the areas of conversions, marriages and death. Israel basically gives limited if any recognition to non-Orthodox denominations, egalitarian aspirations and anyone who dares claim a less stringent interpretation of Halacha, Jewish law. So the Russian immigrant with the Jewish grandfather can be drafted into the army and possibly die for the State of Israel, but if he wants to get married Jewishly in his adopted country he cannot unless he is converted by Orthodox law — something he may be unwilling or unable to do. That is just not right and no matter how deep one feels about Jewish preservation. This qualifies as an injustice that needs a remedy in a fair and balanced manner.
I can go on about coalition politics or about how the stringent rules governing who is a Jew is the only thing that will preserve true Judaism as it has for thousands of years. However, we all know that such declarations are ideological only, backed up by limited scholarship and are primarily useful for factions seeking to maintain power, whether in Israeli politics or maintaining Orthodox rabbinic hegemony over anything labeled “religious.” We need all the Jews we can get, “watered down” or not. Certainly, Jewish racial purity can always be worked out on a more personal basis and less so in the broad strokes of rabbinical fiat.
As I celebrate Passover with my family I will reflect on the redemption from bondage in Egypt, my father’s survival from Hitler’s atrocities, the birth of Israel and how far we still have to go to really being a unified independent nation. I will pray that all Jews be accepted equally in the nation of Israel and that this Passover will mark the beginning of our ultimate freedom.
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