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At 12:21 8/13/97 EDT, Betsy Peters wrote:
>I am finding the discourse on Jewish laws very interesting. Can anybody recommend
>a good book(s) about Jewish law/traditions? Through my adoption search, I found out my
> biological father is Jewish, so I'm curious about the background. (Never found him, so if any
>of you Jewish men dated a girl in Sandusky Ohio, who was from PA, somewhere around
>March/May 1956, you could be he!).>Betsy
REPLY
As you may have gathered from David Shaw's postings, jewish law is far from clear-cut. Indeed, one of the sources of anti-Semitism is the unease that Judaism's ambiguity generates in minds that are seeking closure. May I recommend two books that could provide a context for deeper study?
God, Jews, and History by Max Dimont is the best short explanation, IMO, of who the Jews are. It is controversial because it does not follow an orthodox party line that identifies authenticity with strict observance of laws. Dimont's principal theme is the connection of the Jews with history. I had made a similar connection myself many years ago and was pleased to hear it confirmed by Barbara Ward (Lady Jackson), once editor of The Economist, in a talk at Vassar College ca. 1956; she attributed the invention of the idea of history to the Jews. It is a point of view that explains a lot with a simple premise, but it has been obscured by internal political interests.
If you are particularly interested in the religious side of the Jews and start with a background in Christian belief, I recommend Where Judaism Differed by Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver. It's about 40 years old and may be hard to find; if not through your library, try the Jewish Publication Society in Philadephia. By comparing and contrasting Judaism with the more familiar majority religion, Silver makes the unique aspects of Judaism quickly accessible.
My own view is that there is a fundamental philosophical difference between Hebraism and Hellenism, "neither Greek nor Jew" as the N.T. attempts to put a foot in both camps but thereby loses pregnant distinctions. Western civilzation owes much of its philosophy to a continuing dialog between those ancient rivals and is now further enriching itself by a new regard for eastern, non-theological traditions. Several years ago I gave a short talk on this subject at the local Unitarian-Universalist Church, which you can find here.
I can make further recommendations if you will indicate more about the direction your interests are taking.
Sander
At 20:07 8/13/97 -0400, Doug McKean wrote:
>Well, since we're talking about it,
>I need to ask the following question.
>
>I'm extremely ignorant to what I'm about to ask,
>so if it offends anyone, sorry in advance...
>
>Several years ago, I had considered converting
>from Episcopalianism (don't ask. It's like being
>half Catholic) to Judaism. Someone I used to
>know very well married a woman who was Jewish.
>
>He converted. His explanation of the conversion
>was that he isn't really considered , I don't know
>how to say it other than, a real Jew. He's more of
>an "outsider" (I think that was the term).
>
>Anyway, it had something to do with Judaism being
>carried by the mother. In other words, if a man and
>a woman married, Judaism is "automatically" carried
>onto the children for the mother is Jewish. The father
>doesn't have to be Jewish. In my friends case, he
>doesn't have a Jewish lineage so to speak.
>
>Is there some truth to this?>
REPLY
David Shaw will be able to give you a more authoritative reading on the law, but here're the current realities. Have you got a lot of time?
There's more than some truth to that, but it isn't simple. The "official" (halachic) position is that jewishness is passed matrilinearly. One reason given is that the identification of the mother is certain, the father, well, less so. Remember that these rules go back to prescientific days and carry a lot of historical baggage accreted over centuries of reinterpretation.
You might start with the message I posted in response to Betty Peters' question and take a look at my Unitarian page
Unlike the various Catholic establishments -- which are over on the Greek side of of the dialogue -- the Jews (generally, always generally; one can't be categorical with Jews) do not recognize a central authority for settling legal questions. The orthodox in Israel who run their Ministry of Religion might like to become such an authority, but there are other orthodox who don't even recognize the state since it wasn't founded by the Messiah, who hasn't come yet, and the majority of jewish Israelis are secular who sort of let the religious do what they want. Then there's the relations between Jews in Israel and in the diaspora ("exile"), mainly the US but you find Jews in surprising places.
That's only a start of the confusion. Perhaps the easiest way to proceed without writing a book is for me to put here a number of relevant topics and let you point at the ones that pique your curiosity.
All that may seem superflous and way beyond the question you asked. The problem is that I can give you a categorical answer to your question, but you won't understand it adequately unless you're at least acquainted with quite a few of those listed topics and get a feel for the context, loopholes, and exceptions.
So:
A conversion that will stick anywhere in the world, as a practical matter, would have to be done by studying under an orthodox rabbi and following a lot of rituals (including circumcision for males). The tradition is for the rabbi to refuse the conversion twice, but if the applicant comes back a third time, the rabbi will begin to take it seriously. Conversion was once a jewish practice but has been disfavored for many centuries because: a) forced conversion to Xtianity left a bad taste in the mouth -- that which offends thee do not do to others, and b) in contrast to the Hellenic tradition, The Truth is not absolute demanding universal belief. The orthodox will tend to regard the convert with reservation for reasons complementary to the Catholic suspicion of jewish converts to their religion; you have to know something of the Spanish Inquisition here.
One can get less flak in the Reformed branch. That originated in Germany after the Napoleonic emancipation of the European Jews and came to this country (Ohio, in fact) about 125 years ago. These (and the Reconstructionists), as the name implies, see adaptation to current conditions of time and place as part of the long-held jewish tradition while retaining respect for the old ways. The Reformed were the first to recognize that exclusionary policies for the sake of a tradition from another age were self-defeating.
There is a self-created "crisis" in the jewish community related to a perception of loss of population because of intermarriage. Rates of 38 to 52% have been recently projected, and there is an assumption that the children of those marriages are lost to the jewish community. Well, the Reformed were the first to recognize that rebuffing interested inquiries and ostracizing non-jewish spouses wasn't doing anything good for the Jews. They still don't proselytize, but they have set up procedures to respond positively to requests for information. They don't isolate themselves from society or reality. Many congregations have special programs for the non-jewish mate. I'll defer discussion of the downside which is an ugly dispute in Israel between the orthodox religious establishment and the Reformed and Conservative movements.
Rather than bemoan intermarriage and pressure children to marry "in the tribe", the better policy is to reach out to the interested "outsider". The calculation is obvious, a 50% "loss" from a 2% minority can be (roughly) balanced by a bit over 1% conversion from the majority. And converts often bring a refreshing vitality and extra dedication into the community precisly because it's a conscious choice and not a status imposed by an accident of birth.
So, the short answer is: 1) Read some books about the Jews, of which there are many. 2) Find a rabbi (the best bet is a Reformed) who'll talk to you about what jewishness is. If you don't find him or her (Reformed and Conservative ordain women) congenial, just look for another rabbi. 3) Ask questions of your jewish friends. You may get some contradictory answers, but that's part of the way jewishness works.
Sander
At 15:17 8/14/97 -0400, David Shaw wrote:
>The Orthodox (who sure as heck are going to ostracize non-Jewish spouses),
>while not really reaching out to the non-Jew (for the reasons you cited),
>have major outreach programs for the Jew. The modern Baal Teshuva idea (a
>Jew who becomes more religious and generally Orthodox) originated in that.
>
>David>
REPLY
Yep, I know about Chabad, for example. (To the lurkers: Chabad is an organized orthodox movement to get casual Jews to rediscover the "joys" of orthodoxy, which are real for some people and not for others. They're not quite the Jehovah's Witnesses of Judaism, but there's some similarity.)
Maybe this is a good time to take up point 7 on my list of topics, the orthodox from Sander's viewpoint.
With particular exceptions -- see later -- I like having them around. They represent a living connection with an earlier age, and living history is far more meaningful than trying to reconstruct it from words in books. They flourished as preservers of Judaism against the pressures of a Catholic society in an earlier age and deserve full marks for that, but that doesn't give them an eternal lock on the religion; we live in a different age. In terms of the value of the orthodox to the world, they preserve certain traditions and modes of thinking that, at the right time and circumstance, may make an important difference. Indeed, it has often been the children of orthodox who in rebelling and breaking from the mold render services to the larger civilization. Orthodox communities can be thought of as nurseries for potential contributors to science and art. I use the metaphor of the Bohr atom in which the jumping of an electron out of its normal energy state emits a photon (light) into the environment.
I don't resent the internal proselytizing; I can always walk away, and I rather enjoy standing on my doorstep discussing religion with J. Witnesses and Mormons, so why not Jews too? If I feel that they are mistaken, it doesn't matter. People have their beliefs for their own reasons and to fill their own needs. (I'll reserve a digression on the psychology of closure and the Sherlock Holmes effect for another time.)
But withal, I believe the orthodox have misread the messages of the Torah and of history. As I tried to say in my talk to the Unitarians , it is not a message of obedience and submission to authority (as Islam reads it) but a message of responsibility. The Reconstructionists have got it essentially right. (Lurkers: Reconstructionism is a small branch of Judaism founded by Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan in 1934. It sees change and adaptation of Judaism -- not merely as a religion but as a civilization -- as the essence of its survival. It calls for reinterpretation of the words of the books to fit the circumstances of the age.)
Were the orthodox merely wrong, it would not be worth discussing them, but, IMO, they may be doing Judaism and the Jews (not identical) significant harm. The orthodox, I believe, have picked up a bit too much Hellenism and are too wrapped up with the "word" rather than the "world." As I pointed out in the previous post, by their repulsion of non-Jews and affirmation of isolation of Jews from the larger world they alienate Jews who could enhance the jewish numbers.
Their claims of special authenticity are specious. In Israel, they have unfairly preempted the traditions of the founders, most of whom were secular socialists. They have frequently adopted the rhetorical stance of their Arab adversaries, forsaking progressive pragmatism for ideological argument. They are of the mind that excommunicated Spinoza. Their ideas, of themselves, are personal and harmless; their attempts to legislate their own interpretation of Jewishness and to destroy the ambiguous, pluralistic, dynamic traditions of the people will only validate Arnold Toynbee's (a distinguished anti-Semitic historian) canard characterizing Judaism as a "fossil religion."
Where, then, should the orthodox fit into the larger picture of jewish civilization? Another metaphor appeals to me. In traditional genetic manipulation we inbreed for certain characteristics and then crossbreed for hardiness. The orthodox, in their exclusivity and specialization in certain traditions, serve as a source of intellectual and ethical values of which they can properly be proud. But rather than lament the the loss of offspring to other communities, it would make more sense to rejoice that they are transmitting the best, most useful of their values to others (the crossbreeding operation). The Jews have survived not because they have observed a single standard of Judaism or established a doctrinal authority but because they have been flexible, pragmatic, and diverse while cultivating a sense of unity despite differences. Wouldn't the world work better if that were a generally accepted attitude? Those orthodox who insist on doctrinal uniformity, special authenticity, and privileged authority betray, IMO, the genius of the Jews, weaken the jewish community, and invite negative reactions from other traditions and cultures. They'd be a bad example rather than "a light unto the nations."
Sander
At 13:07 8/21/98 -0700, Douglas McKean wrote:
>Bruce, I'm fairly certain I know what you're referring to.
>This was after the time when common market places began to
>flourish and when real currency began to come into existence.
>Trade added to this between countries. Somewhere (very loosely)
>around the 14th century. And I'm probably off on this by
>a couple of hundred years or so.>What I was referring to happened long before this time - 14th
>century or so. There's alot of evidence to support prejudices
>against the Jewish people well before the first millennium.
REPLY
One way of looking at the earlier anti-Jewish prejudice is as political propaganda. Remember that politics, group identity, and nationhood was inseparable from religion. The meme for "separation of church and state" didn't rise until well after the European settlement in America, and it still has to be defended against its antecedents.
If one thinks of it in political terms one can see counterparts in modern times. The coherent picture I see, removing the mysticism, runs as follows. In the time of Jesus the Jewish nation was under foreign domination, in the midst of ideological contention, and internally controlled by a theocratic institution of hereditary priests. Jesus' group was one of a number of sects looking for alternatives to the status quo, of which the most prominent was the Essenes. In a way, Jesus was an anti-establishment "hippie" who saw "the system" as corrupt. Like the other sects, Jesus was a Jev appealing to other Jews. He was a rabbi -- a teacher -- as contrasted to a priest. He was not unique in this respect; Hillel was the most famous of his contemporary rabbis.
The Jewish god, YAHWEH, was a tribal god among other tribal gods. That's the way the world was organized then. The central concern of the Jews was how to live an ethical life, not how achieve perfection, and they had long abandoned any dreams of territorial domination. The alternative world view was Greek, which was polytheistic, idealistic, and -- particularly in its Roman manifestation -- militaristic. It was not notably concerned with ethics. Foolishly, IMO, the Jews at that time relied on zeal more than on power to oppose the Romans so while they did surprisingly well in the short run, they eventually lost their territory and their theocratic structure and were exiled (again) into a reliance on a rabbinic network.
The "genius" of Christianity (IMO, of course) was Paul, Jesus' PR man. Faced with the destruction of the Jewish polity, he siezed the opportunity to transform Judaism by universalizing it. YAHWEH was to be everyone's god, not just the Jews', and both Hebraic and Greek points of view were to be merged. It's stated explicitly in a couple of Epistles in the phrase, "neither Greek nor Jew", all were to be as one. The initial appeal was to the oppressed classes which shared the powerlessness of the Jews. The vision was extremely attractive: dissolve the contention within a single universal community of faith.
Those Jews who bought into Paul's vision disappeared into Christianity. The question then is, why didn't they all do so? With the dissolution of priestly authority and the change of the nature of their God from an immediate force to a metaphorical source of ethical standards (emerging in rabbinical debates) and with the abandonment of hegemonic ambitions (and proselytizing), the Jews had to face up to their differences with the Greeks in philosophical (rather than territorial) terms. (I am forced here to adopt Hellenic categorization in order to communicate clearly, but the situation was not categorical and far from clear.) Essentially, the Jews tried to view the world as it was, not through ideal categories. They preserved the contradictions and dissonances of their reality in a book of history (essentially) rather than of dogma. They wanted to preserve their minority view in the face of the majority.
What was distinctive about the Jewish way was its emphasis on individual responsibility, even as it preserved its continuity in a dispersed communal structure. And the Jewish practicality proved, in the event, to be correct. Despite their universalistic ideals, the Christians proved to be schismatic among themselves and had to distinguish themselves from their antecedent religion by distorting and condemning it. Their Hellenistic component was embodied in an underlying assumption that there was an ultimate unitary truth, an ideal to which all right-thinking people should (must) conform. And having The Truth, it was incumbent to make everyone acknowledge it. Jesus, to the Jews a man like other men, was idealized and made into a god as the Romans elevated their emperors to godhood. The two points of view were not reconcilable. The early myths about the Jews, I believe, arose as part of a defense against the strength of the Jewish point of view. The same situation arose repeatedly, notably under Mohammad and Luther. The failure of the Jews to convert to the new religions simply stuck in the craws of their proponents.
It shouldn't be necessary, but to anticipate some reactions I have to state that I am not trying to argue against anyone's faith or claim superiority for Jews and their ways. People's beliefs are unarguable, and they do good or evil despite formal creeds. I am trying to present my own view which I believe to be coherent and based on an assumption of an underlying consistency in peoples' behavior across historical eras. Not to say, however, that we are bound by consistency.
Sander
Copyright © 1997, 1998
Sander Rubin
Created: 03 Nov 97
- Converted from M-Talk list messages.
Revised: 22 Aug 98