Lilit Marcus, Shiksa Menace 3.0

One does hope/assume that was a joke, but I really don't see why people (other than the ultra-Orthodox, obviously) dwell on these issues.  Coming from a fairly complex family and religious background myself, I've often found myself thinking about identity.  I agree that it's observance/faith that rationally should define someone's Judaism.  And it doesn't have to be your "Protestant half" thinking that faith matters most -many rabbis since at least Saadiah Gaon have put faith at the center of Jewish identity.

seriously. Get that man a column.

In case people don't know who Luke is: I interviewed him with a fellow of mine for a documentary show about pornography in America. The show was to air on Channel Four in the UK, so Luke was quite free to discuss his upbringing as a son of an Australian preacher in NorCal and how he started enjoying bestiality. After he recovered from his porn addiction, or, while he recovered from his porn addiction, he found himself attracted to Judaism, moved to Jerusalem and converted. His website used to be one of the porn industry's premiere rumor site.

Luke is fascinated with all things Jewish, and that includes women (or dogs, or sheep, or others of course, but only if they're jewish too) 

 

I must call bullshit on faith being a necessary ingredient in Jewishness.  I am in the same situation that Lilit Marcus finds herself in (the halfie situation).  A Jewish father and a Catholic mother.  I was raised Catholic for the first thirteen years of my life (very nasty), but quickly drifted away from the faith soon thereafter.  As an adult, I have explored and identified much more with the Jewish half of me.  And I mean that culturally.  Sure... I have attended a few Shabbat services here and there, spoken to a Rabbi or two, blah blah.  But I cannot escape the fact that I find such rituals to a non-existent desert god foolish.  Yes, I am an atheist who was raised Catholic who consider himself a Jew.  Is that so wrong?  You cannot strip me of my Jewish DNA, history, relatives, cultural influence, etc.  I could care less about some silly Rabbinical ruling thousands of years ago.  Halakha is meaningless.  Faith is not central to how I view myself. 

 

Maybe I am a bit too defensive!  But you know there is good reason for that.  I mean what does matrilineal descent mean?  Does it mean you should discount half of your culture, be forced to 'convert?'  Can someone just rob you of half of your identity, half of who you are just because of the fact your mother is not part of the tribe?  It hurt growing up when it was obvious that my little nuclear family was the "black sheep" of my father's side.  Treated and viewed differently merely because of an interfaith marriage and all the baggage that goes along with it.  Especially considering my father's family are entirely secular to begin with.  The rotting stench of matrilineal descent and all that it entails matters even to them.  Such a tragedy.  What scalpel is there that is going to extract my Jewish blood?  

 

This is obviously all a waste of finger energy since no Orthodox Jewish person is going to consider going to bed with me in any serious manner. ;)  But the overwhelming majority of relationships I have participated in were with Jewish females.  All of them pretty much considered me 'Jewish enough,' even the one more observant Conservative Jew.

I'm all about ignoring the people who have a problem with me not being Jewish enough because I'm comfortable enough with myself and where I'm going at this point. That having been said, I've been known to make shiksa jokes at my own expense because of my Catholic upbringing. So my question is this: can I be the Shiksa Menace 4.0? Jewish by birth to a convert, raised outside the Tribe and trying to infiltrate by, you know, practicing Judaism and hoping to marry a Jewish man and have a Jewish family?

So, if I'm a 5'8" naturally-blonde green-eyed halachically kosher Jewess (my interfaith parents even have a ketubah!) with a super-Catholic real name who looks like my Irish dad and was raised Catholic, and I'm a Jewish-identified atheist, does that make me 4.0 too? (My long-term live-in boyfriend is maternally Jewish as well.) 

The standing line is that "I've got shiskappeal"; one of my friends just started a "Blonde Jews" Facebook group!

This needs to be a t-shirt.

 

That Lilit's being a menace has little to do with her lineage.

As an Orthodox Jew, I'm obligated to stand by the law of matrilineal descent. I cannot honestly testify that I know its exact source (I have *faith* in its source, but I cannot prove it any more than I can prove that the Torah is from Sinai), but be that as it may, it is readily explicable why Judaism, like any other legal system, requires a litmus test for citizenship. Any country has precise standards for admission, and can Judaism be any different?

Sadly, of course, there are people lost in the cracks. But this doesn't mean we have to take pride in this fact! I cannot fathom where "Chaim Amalek" derives the hutzpah he has - if there are those who believe they are Jewish, but lack the pedigree, this is something for us to mourn and sympathize with, not criticize! How dare he??!!

Rabbi Marc D. Angel, following Rabbi Benzion Uziel (the late Sefardi Chief Rabbi of British-Mandate Palestine) writes (Tradition 1972, "Another Halakhic Approach to Conversions"), regarding converting (via an Orthodox conversion) a Jew's non-Jewish partner, only for the sake of marriage exclusively:
"Furthermore, it is dangerous to forbid conversion [in the case of a non-Jewish spouse who is converting only for marriage] since it will force the Jewish partners of interfaith marriages either to convert to the other religion or to become defiled by the improper relationship. Those who have been rejected from the people of Israel have historically been our worst enemies. <b>We also have an obligation to the children of these marriages. After all, they are of Jewish stock (Mizera Yisrael) even if their mother is not Jewish. They are lost sheep whom we must reclaim for our people. In an emotional passage, Rabbi Uziel writes: 'And I fear that if we push them [the children] away completely by not accepting their parents for conversion, we shall be brought to judgment and they shall say to us : ''You did not bring back those that were driven away and those who were lost you did not seek'' (Ezekiel 34:4).</b> This chastisement is far more severe than the chastisement of accepting converts who in all likelihood will not be observant Jews." (My addition: It is worth noting that Rabbi Dr. Eliezer Berkovits had an identical stance on granting Orthodox conversions to non-Orthodox candidates, for the exact same reason, viz. "ahavat yisrael".)

Now, I do not wish to get into the precise halakhic and sociological merits and demerits to granting such conversions to non-Orthodox candidates; suffice it to say, the laws of conversion are complex and subject to dispute. But the point is that whether the Orthodox courts grant such conversions, either way, we must nevertheless view non-Jewish offspring of Jewish fathers with profound sympathy, nay with brotherhood. As Rabbi Uziel emphasizes, they are of Jewish stock! How can we look askane at them? How can we deny our kinship??!!

I myself am the son of a Jewish father and a Conservative-converted mother, and so, once I became Orthodox, this was no longer sufficient for me to consider myself Jewish, and I converted with the Israeli rabbinut. But when I look at my mother and brother, I am unable to see them as anything  but Jewish. My mother taught me almost all I know about Judaism, and it is with my mother and brother (not to mention my father) that I attended shul, lit Hanuka candles, etc. How can I view them as non-Jews? My entire Jewish identity is based on what she taught me, based on her upbringing. Who taught me the halachic concept of "whose blood is redder?" - was it a rabbi? No! It was my mother! Who taught me the Jewish mission of "l'taken olam b'malchut shad-ai", to rectify the world's sociological, moral, and physical status under the ageis of G-d's kingdom - was it a rabbi? No, it was my mother! If I deny her part in the Jewish people, I deny my own. (I am crying as I write this.)

My mother wrote to Rabbi Angel about this, and his words of consolation to her were truly beautiful and inspiring. While he could not do anything, the halacha being what it is, he said that ultimately, my mother's status is between her and G-d, and in the meantime, Rabbi Angel said it is great to have her be part of the Jewish people, whatever her precise halachic status may be.

This is my first visit to Jewcy, and have just stumbled with interest on the Shiksa post.

A few things to add here. I'm the son of a Sabra dad (whose own father was a Sephardic cantor in the Jerusalem Old City before the 1948 war) and a gentile (and to make it even more interesting, German) mother. I don't fully identify as Jewish, though I do also value that part of my identity greatly and have toyed with the idea of converting in the past  - though, like others here, would find it hard to proffer my belief in a holy CEO dispensing missives from mountaintops.

Mikewinddale - while your response is no doubt heartfelt and well-meant, it inadvertently illustrates a few annoying things about religious clubdom. The statement that you "view non-Jewish offspring of Jewish fathers with profound sympathy, nay with brotherhood" sounds more patronising than it's probably meant to sound - from this side of the fence it's a little like not being considered part of the 'cool club' at school because you wear the wrong kind of clothes.

So - sympathy for what, I ask? At least fundamentalist Christians have the prospect of everlasting hellfire to sharpen the import of being 'in or 'out'. Heck, if you want to be part of the musty, tradition-sanctioned Mosaic club, you can always convert. If you don't, you can choose Reform, which looks a lot more fun anyway.

I actually don't mean to be flippant about a life choice and discipline that obviously means a lot to yourself and countless others - in fact I have great admiration for people who can find the focus to live such a dedicated life in these agnostic and shallow times. It's just that part of me, while rejoicing in the fact that I and others have such an eclectic mix of traditions rattling around in our bloodstream, wonder if it might be time to say enough already with the tribalism and to start thinking in terms of a common humanity, regardless of who's in or out according to some ancient edict that arose when they couldn't work out whose babies were Romans and whose were Jews. The 'putting the fence around the Torah' argument is fair enough to some degree, but it seems that the more people of all types persist with this holy nightclub door policing, the more disgruntled a race we'll continue to breed...

Thank you for your critique. I stand by what I said, but I do appreciate your criticism.

I can understand why my sympathy could be taken as back-handed. I was trying to say that even those who aren't halachically Jewish should be nevertheless viewed as quasi-Jewish, but the flipside is that I'm saying that even many of those who consider themselves Jewish, are merely quasi-Jewish. I'm being more permissive than most Orthodox, but less so than non-Orthodox, so one's judgement of me depends on from which side he or she is judging me. 

Now, I disagree with what you say about, "[I]t might be time to say enough already with the tribalism and to
start thinking in terms of a common humanity..." I think it is human nature that we all need some extended family to belong to. Being the social creatures we are, we cannot survive without some sort of group identification.

Now, "common humanity" is NOT a tenable identification to satisfy that need; it is simply far too nebulous. If you try to love everyone, you'll love nobody. As Ze'ev Maghen puts it, if someone tells you that he loves your children like his own, that is someone you DON'T want as your babysitter. Similarly, if you tell your girlfriend that you love her like to love all women, you'll only end up with a smarting groin. Humans thrive on preferential love; that's just a fact of human nature.

Now, what we need, however, is that our preferential love does not altogether exclude love for others. Rather, on the contrary, we should use our preferential love to bridge the gap; we should have concentric circles of brotherhood, and each ring should help us identify with the next. Maghen explains: he once heard of an Indian helicoptor crashing, killing the soldiers on board. He knew he ought to feel bad, but it just didn't strike home. So he instead imagined an IDF helicoptor crashing, and all of a sudden, he understood how the Indians felt about their own dying. He says he couldn't even finish the food he was eating; he simply had no more appetite.

Similarly, I was once at a funeral eulogy. Unfortunately, the eulogy was in Hebrew, and I could barely understand anything, and so of course, the eulogy didn't bring me to tears as it was supposed to. Suddenly, they called up the deceased's brother. The moment I heard "...ach shel..." [...brother of...], I burst out crying. I instantly knew how I'd feel at my own brother's funeral, and I could perfectly empathize with the deceased's brother.

I recommend Maghen's article on this subject. Even if you ultimately disagree with Maghen, his piece is nevertheless simply one of the most hilarious things I've ever read; nothwithstanding its serious topic, the man knows how to be humorous. 

(Here's a sample sentence of his, which I think we can all identify with: "Ever since my childhood, when I was dragged to High Holiday services once a year—where my boredom was of such magnitude that it could only be alleviated by continually conjuring up the vision of myself leaping headlong from the balcony to my death by impalement on the spikes of the Menora below—ever since then, I remember wondering what the point of all this [viz. Judaism] was.")

"Imagine: On Love and Lennon"
by Ze'ev Maghen (Lecturer of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Bar Ilan University)
1) http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=311 (HTML format, split into 11 pages, requiring one to click "next" after each page)
2) http://www.azure.org.il/article.php?id=311&page=all (HTML; all 11 pages on page page, for one view)
3) http://www.azure.org.il/include/print.php?id=311 (HTML, printable view)
4) http://www.azure.org.il/download/magazine/1451az7_maghen.pdf (PDF format)

Maghen's article is also adapted, summarized but with little
substantial alteration, by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo, in Thoughts to
Ponder. (I forget whether volume one or two.)

One of the things I have learned in my short life(for those who know me pun intended), it is that everyone and their Jewish or Shiksa mother has an opinion. I am 100% Jewish(both of my parents are Jewish) however, I am as reformed as one gets. Does that make me not a Jew because I have eaten non-kosher food as well as the occassional shell fish? To the ultra-orthodox one whose mother is not Jewish may not be considered Jewish. But honestly, identity is just that-- personal and self-defined. If you define yourself in a particular way based on your beliefs, practices, and lifestyle then that is all that matters. Everyone has an opinion, and you will never be able to please everyone, and besides, Lilit I dont think you are a menace.

Thanks MikeWinddale for your considered comments. Although we come from different viewpoints, I really appreciate the tone and thoughfulness of your reply to my post. It's a world away from the usual exchanges on the web, where words are bandied as weapons, without care and with even less responsibility. Actually that's one of the things that attracts me most to Jewish intellectual culture - the ability to debate, to look at things from different and sometimes incompatible angles, passionately but impersonally too, without debate degrading into some kind of theoretical and personal slanging match.

So, to follow up on your comments. Well, I guess I myself consider myself nominally "quasi-Jewish" anyway. I, as the last poster has stated, have defined that for myself. It's not a problem for me to be considered this way. I've lost count of the number of times others have wanted me to fully convert (especially when living in Ma'ayan Zvi kibbutz years ago while the Project Otzma kids were there too), but the insider/outsider role is a good one for me. It did, however take me a long time to accept this, and despite that fact that I didn't want to be part of the club, and all that it implied, it still stung at times when I wasn't considered 'Jewish enough' (for instance, the Ascent Institute in Tzfat wouldn't let me take part in their program).

So yes, I agree with you that the sense of tribal belonging is something humans crave and need. Sometimes I am amazed at the lengths to which people go to secure this. I remember a girl I met at Heritage House in Jerusalem (an organisation that, by the way, welcomed me...go figure) who was a Czech gentile, had come to Israel on her own and undertaken the full conversion process, alientating her entire family in the process.

Should not someone like this be welcomed as part of the fold, rather than ruled ineligible due to some ancient law, while a secular girl with no interest in Jewish life, but who happens to have a Jewish mother, is considered in?

And someone like me, with numerous paternal relatives who fought in the Palmach in 1948, and whose father's forbears, including the cantor, have lived in the Levant for generations - where does that fit?

In the end, as Elizabeth said above, people fashion their own reality and identity from the available resources - and especially since we live in the age of fragmentation and invidualism, of huge shifts and breaks in culture and history. My identity will always be compound and hybrid, a smorgasbord if you like. That's OK with me. There will always, if I can borrow Torah language, be sparks of me dispersed around the globe. But  others in similar positions might find it harder.

Now, onto the preferential love thing. This morning a disturbed father here in Melbourne threw his four-year-old daughter off a high bridge. She died. An awful story. As a parent with young children, I really felt distraught by that. So yes, identification with the familiar can bring abstract tragedies closer. What's closer to home is more affecting. However, I have no idea what nationality/race/religion that little girl was. She was an innocent human being, pure and simple. Similarly (and I realise I'm getting into possibly controversial territory mentioning this recent conflict), stories of innocent child victims in Gaza have upset me, as well as many others here, regardless of the political justification for the events that cause the suffering - because they are children, innocent of all political context, guilt and guile. Same for stories of Israeli bombing victims. Even though my family is Israeli, and, yes, of course I love them more intensely than any Gaza resident, I don't feel any less for the Gaza victims than the Israeli ones. I still maintain that preferential tribal thinking, whatever the tribe, has the potential to blind people to seeing the essential commonalities of all people. Without that, you lose humanity and you can easily spiral into - and perpetuate - a numbness to the suffering of others who aren't on your 'team'.

Thank you again for the links - will read them shortly.

I understand your question on why the desirous-convert is "out" (at least until she converts), whereas the secular-born-Jew is "in".

The reason is, I think, as I suggested above, that Judaism needs a coherent and consistent citizenship law. Do some individuals get lost in the process? Unfortunately, yes. But I once saw (I forget where) an interesting thought exercise:
- An Iraqi sees the American soldiers fighting Sadam. Inspired, he pulls his khakis and AK-47 out, and spends the next several years fighting as a guerilla warrior for the Americans. Finally, the war ends, and he flies to America, and is shocked to discover he must go through the entire naturalization process. He just spent years fighting for America!
- A born American citizen, inspired, flies to Iraq and joins Sadam. He may be committing treason, but he's still an American.

This is necessary, because ultimately, Judaism retains the autonomous power of the ritual (see http://www.jewishideas.org/articles/retroactive-annulment-giyyur-convers..., s. v. "The Autonomy of Ritual"); for example, recital of Kiddush has the power to sanctify Shabbat, IF that Kiddush was recited by someone bound by the laws of the Shabbat. Jewish rituals are nominal and institutional.

Moreover, if Judaism is to have the vision of G-d's chosen "kingdom of priests and a holy nation", as "a light to the nations", "that My salvation reach the ends of the earth", then Judaism must retain some definition of who is Jewish and who is not. If the army has separate divisions, this is not because the branches have different value, but rather, they have separate-but-equal roles. Were the lines between army divisions to be blurred, this would only cripple the army's ability to do its task.

Well said, Mikewinddale.