Question: I am a non-Jewish mother of an orthodox convert daughter who is to marry a Jewish man this year. They plan to have a very traditional Jewish ceremony. My soon-to-be son-in-law lost both of his parents before he graduated high school. Can You suggest some ideas of things I can do for him that may have been done by his mother if she were here without offending him or breaking Jewish tradition? Thank you so much.
What a wonderful, sensitive question. Many parents would be nervous or uncomfortable about their daughter's impending marriage in a setting very different from what they are used to and here you are, wondering respectfully how you can be there for your daughter's intended. I hope your daughter and her fiance both realize how lucky they are to have you in their lives.
There are few formal ritual roles for the mother of the groom at a traditional Jewish wedding, but much of this will depend on what kind of relationship you already have with your son in law. Since the parents of the couple often stand beneath the huppah, will he have someone standing in for his parents? If not, perhaps the mesader kiddushin (the rabbi performing the service) can make it explicit that you are there on behalf of both members of the couple? Often both parents walk each of the people being married down the aisle to the huppah. If he has no one to walk him, perhaps you could volunteer, especially if your daughter's father is available to walk her? At some weddings, there is a point before the huppah where both sets of parents offer blessings--either quietly or out loud-- to their respective children. Perhaps he would be comfortable having you offer him some blessing for his future life with your daughter?
Ultimately, this all depends on what your son in law will find comfortable and meaningful, so you should approach this gently and ask him whether he would want any of these things. He may not, and if he does not it may have nothing at all to do with his feelings of warmth and respect towards you, so you should not take it personally. Getting married without your parents in attendance is bound to bring up difficult memories or feelings of loss, and it is important not to impose if he feels any reticence in having you fill that space. Nevertheless, you should certainly ask, and I hope that he will feel touched by the offer. Ultimately if he wants you to play such a role it is also important to have a conversation in advance with the rabbi performing the ceremony to make sure that he also is comfortable with the preceedings, and this may vary.
Whatever you and your son in law and the rabbi ultimately decide, may you and they know only happiness, good health and long life. I found your question itself extremely touching.
best wishes,
Don Seeman
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Question: Hello,
I am currently converting to Judaism, and am nearing the end of my conversion. One reason I began this process was because I discovered that my mother’s family was Jewish a few generations ago. Apparently they assimilated or converted out because of anti-Semitism. While it occurs on my mother’s mother’s side (far back, however, not very recent) the only “proof” I have is that of a few family traditions and the knowledge of other family members that we “were all Jewish” I also have reason to believe that some of my family who did not emigrate were victims in the Shoah. While I feel the process of converting is valuable for me personally, I often wonder if, with some research, I would be able to prove that I’m already Jewish. One rabbi that I know puts very little weight to this, almost as if my Jewish heritage doesn’t matter, and that I should just focus on my own spiritual journey. I find that hurtful, especially given the whole background of my situation. I don’t want to act as if my Jewish family never existed! Somehow I want my conversion to be an honor to them and a remembrance for them. What are some ways to approach this situation that balances both the doubt about whether or not I am halachically Jewish with sensitivity towards my Jewish heritage and towards my ancestors who evidently suffered for being Jewish? [Administrator's note: Jewish Values Online cannot advise you on your personal situation. For that sort of advice, please see the Rabbi with whom you are working toward conversion.]
I certainly understand your distress. I need to begin by repeating the administrator's note appended to your question: for specific advise about your personal situation you need to speak with the rabbi or rabbis who are guiding your conversion. That said, let me try to offer some words of orientation.
Rabbis will sometimes take a person's presumed Jewish background into account when deciding how to structure the educational component and expectations for conversion but there are two countervaling pressures. One is if they don't really think the evidence of someone's Jewish family background is that clear or compelling--as it sounds like in this case we are talking about a few generations ago. The other issue though is more conceptual. When a person chooses to become a Jew, Jewish law and theology demands that this be a really free-willed decision and that the individual in question understands what they are getting themselves into. A rabbi who encourages you to focus on your own journey may not be denying or belittling your own sense of yourself as a person of Jewish heritage but rather trying to insist that you take the conversion itself seriously as being more than just pro-forma, and understand that you have a choice in the matter. They may insist upon this even more if your Jewish heritage is somewhat more distant rather than pushing the conversion forward as much as possible in the case of someone who is probably Jewish already but just converting out of doubt. What I am saying is that you should think about this less as a denial of your heritage than as a concern to make sure that the integrity of conversion as a real choice is respected.
At the end of the day, you will decide for yourself how to integrate your sense of family heritage with your decision to seek conversion. In a way, you have the best of both worlds open to you; a sense of belonging rooted in history and geneaology as well as the merit of choosing for yourself to come beneath the wings of the Shechinah. But this personal evaluation and integration you seek may not be expressed in the conversion process itself nor should it necessarily be. If you can demonstrate that you are already a Jew by birth so be it, but if you cannot, it may be better to let the conversion process take its own path and to think separately about how to understand your relationship with the past. Just as some converts experience a sense that they "were always Jewish" or "had a Jewish soul" but nevertheless need to take the process seriously in its own right as what the Torah requires, so you may have an existential and familial connection to the Jewish people but need to regain that connection in practical terms through an act of choice and ritual. Your conversion process is important, but it is your future life as a Jew that you should be most committed to thinking through.
I am hopeful that these few words may help you to think about this matter in a way that provokes less distress so that you can focus on your decisions going forward. May you know only blessings.
best,
DS
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Question: Can an Orthodox Jew be a witness at a Conservative wedding? What about a Conservative Jew at an Orthodox wedding? Or a Reform Jew at an Orthodox wedding? Who can serve as a witness, and what are the considerations?
At the end of the day, these are questions that need to be asked in a specific situation to a rabbi who is familiar with the parties involved. Here however are some general guidelines that seem right to me.
I understand that there is often a lot of pressure at a wedding to find “roles” or “honors” for important friends and guests. Witnesses however play an important legal function and must be chosen with that function in mind.
According to halakha, “kosher” witnesses must be adult, male and not related to each other or to the bride and groom. They must also be religiously observant. Maimonides goes out of his way in his Code of Law to note that the reason we disqualify relatives is NOT that we fear they may be untrustworthy, but simply because that is what Scripture requires—it is, in other words, a requirement of law, not a comment on how we think different groups of people might behave. I believe that the same may be said of some of the other requirements of witnesses, including the requirement that they be male.
The problem with having Reform or Conservative witnesses at an Orthodox wedding is that since those movements do not understand Jewish law in the same way as the Orthodox community, and may not even consider it binding, they are probably outside the category of “religiously observant” for this purpose. Even Orthodox witnesses are often counseled to privately repent their sins before serving as witnesses, and an Orthodox witness who was known to be in public violation of one or more commandments might also be disqualified. Reform and Conservative guests or family members of the couple should understand that their own movements have taken their own principled positions on matters of Jewish practice which cannot always be reconciled with Orthodox understandings of halakhah—it is not, therefore, a personal slight if they not asked to serve in the capacity of witnesses, any more than it is when a Reform or Conservative rabbi is not asked to perform an Orthodox wedding.
Of course, many Jews attend Reform or Conservative synagogues without necessarily being convinced of those movements’ ideologies, but those are also often cases in which the individuals in question are not fully observant of Jewish law in other ways. At the very least, Orthodox rabbis usually require that the witnesses identify as Orthodox and are committed to Shabbat, Kashrut and other definitive religious practices. Not having kosher witnesses can sometimes allow a wedding to be considered invalid down the line, which is presumably not what somebody opting for an Orthodox wedding ceremony probably desires. Again, these are questions that should be addressed to the rabbi on the scene.
Looking at things from the other direction, I would generally discourage Orthodox Jews from serving as witnesses at non-Orthodox weddings. Standing as witness is a technical religious act and it implies buying into and supporting the legal standing of the entire process, which in my opinion is difficult for an Orthodox Jew to do. While I would certainly attend and celebrate the wedding of a non-Orthodox friend or relative, I would hesitate to take a formal role in the ceremony. There is also a certain degree of reciprocity in not taking a role at someone else’s wedding that I would not be comfortable having them fulfill in my own.
Finally, there is one more possible concern which is rather more sensitive. Many marriages today end in divorce. It is not uncommon for couples who were not strongly committed to halakha in the first place to seek a civil but not a religious divorce and to remarry without ever having dissolved their first marriages according to halakha. Such cases can be very painful because the children of a second marriage in which the first was never dissolved can be prohibited by Torah law from marrying into the Jewish community. One of the ways rabbis avoid this problem is by finding ways to show that the first marriage in such a case was not really valid, often by showing that the witnesses were not observant. But this might become harder if the witnesses do in fact meet the requirements of Jewish law.
Weddings often serve as opportunities for a couple to celebrate their friendships, their relatives and the things that are important to them. This is as it should be. With respect to the choice of witnesses however, there simply is less leeway than in many other matters. For an Orthodox person or a person who has chosen to hold an Orthodox wedding ceremony, this is one area in which the integrity of Jewish law and commitment to its traditions ought to be paramount, which is why these matters should be discussed with the rabbi of their choice.
best wishes,
Don Seeman
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Question: I was brought up in a secular Jewish home. My grandparents were victims of the Holocaust. We celebrated the major holidays in a non-reigious way but with deep attachment to our Jewish identity, and perpetuating our family traditions. Can I consider myself Jewish in the full sense of the term?
If you are descended from a Jewish mother and father and grew up thinking of yourself as a Jew then you are a Jew in the full sense of the term, no questions asked. You already know through your grandparents about the heritage of suffering and resistance to which you are heir. The fact that you are a Jew today is because of countless generations of people who made daily and sometimes life-changing, heartbreaking choices to make that happen. Perhaps you will be willing to do the same for your future generations.
You are also heir to a heritage that is incredibly rich and whose depths scholars have not yet plumbed. It is there waiting to be discovered anew by each generation. And, you are heir to a set of real demands—ethical, communal and personal-- that make no distinction as to whether a person considers him or herself to be secular or religious (those are such narrow, sterile terms), and that is where you need to decide just how “Jewish” you choose to be. Jewishness after all, involves membership in a family, but it is a very special kind of family because it involves not just a sense of history but one of ultimate destiny as well.
Jewishness involves membership in a series of covenants, or agreements between the members of the Jewish people with one another and with their God. A great scholar of the last generation (Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik in his essay “The Voice of my Beloved Knocks”) observes that we can distinguish in this sense between the covenant of Moses, which includes all of the commandments and rituals of Judaism, and the covenant of Abraham, which involves an even earlier commitment to Jewish destiny and to a broad overarching ethical aspiration. Secular Judaism, to the extent that it considers itself Jewish, is bound most strongly to this covenant of Abraham and tends to neglect the covenant of Moses. Some religious Jews, sadly, do just the opposite. But our ultimate and overwhelming aspiration needs to be bringing them together in deep and binding integration. My responsibilities to the Jewish people and to all beings universally, my responsibility to Torah and to ethics in the broadest sense, must be made indivisibly one.
This is a complex task and it is the project of a lifetime with many challenges and many rewards. This may be more of an answer than you were looking for, but I want to provoke you. It is easy to say that you are Jewish in the full sense of the term. But the real questions is what you are going to do with that—build, nurture and develop it, or allow it to grow unused and eventually shallow. You are already a member of the tribe. But being Jewish in the full sense of the term as I understand it also includes the covenants of Moses and of Abraham.
Best wishes and many blessings in your quest!
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Question: We often hear after a tragedy, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you.” What does it mean that "our prayers are with you," in particular after one loses a limb due to a spineless terrorist attack against innocent civilians? The innocent person's life is changed forever. What does this mean in Judaism?
Your question speaks to the impotence and anger that all of us feel in the presence of terrible harm or injury that we do not know how to heal. You are quite right of course that no words can bring back a lost limb or a shattered life and that sometimes people seize on platitudes in order to avoid the hard work of trying to comfort those who suffer. We need to try harder not to do this.
Nevertheless, I think that most people who say things like “our thoughts and prayers are with you” are not trying in any way to minimize your loss but to find words that are appropriate—saying enough, but not too much. Like you, they know that words alone cannot heal (too many words can be a burden), but they also know that this does not give them the right to say nothing or to foreswear their solidarity with another person—particularly one who has suffered great loss. When they say that thoughts and prayers are with someone, it really means, “we are not ignoring your pain, even though we cannot end it; we are thinking of you and maybe even praying for help that is beyond our capacity to give.” I don’t think this is a specifically Jewish sentiment, it is just the way people in our society try to acknowledge hardship in an honest way, insufficient though it may feel.
It is difficult, but I would try not to be too judgmental of people who seek to help, even if they do say something awkward or something that does not resonate with your own sensibilities. You might even try to think about and articulate (to yourself or to them) what is it about their well-wishes that hurts you. Is it that you do not think they mean it? Or is it that even though they are sincere, you think they are telling you something untrue (prayer won’t bring back a limb that has been lost)? Most people are at a loss because they do not know what to say. They just want to affirm that they care.
This is important, because being part of a community does help to heal. It won’t bring back a limb, but it may help to restore a sense of purpose and potential for happiness in one’s life, and even help one’s body to recover from trauma. Whatever other power it may hold, this is also one of the fundamental reasons we pray as part of a community for people who are ill or hurt. We ask God to help them, and in so doing we also let them know that we want to help them ourselves.
I do not know if this question comes from a personal experience or not, but may God grant us all the healing that we need, in body and in spirit. And may God grant us also the wisdom and compassion to know how to come to one another’s aid in words, in deeds and when necessary in silence.
with blessings,
Don Seeman
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Question: I am an Orthodox Jew and all in my family are Orthodox too. Recently the man I am dating told me that whilst his father is Jewish, his maternal grandmother converted to Judaism through the Liberal Movement, which technically means he is not Jewish according to Orthodox halachah. He attended a Jewish elementary school, works for a Reform Synagogue and considers himself to be Jewish. Indeed, he has a stronger Jewish identity than many people I know who are halachically Jewish! I know that if we were to get married our children would technically be Jewish, through me, but I still have concerns such as: Would we be able to have an Orthodox Jewish wedding? Would my Synagogue call him up/give him a aliyah (honor of being called to the Torah) were he to visit one Shabbat? Would he be counted in a Minyan (quorum for prayer), etc? Are there any other practical implications I haven't thought of that I need to consider? This is a very difficult subject for him as he is quite sensitive about not being recognised as Jewish by other Jews.
You describe yourself as an Orthodox Jew so I want to respond to you as one. Though it may not be the answer you want to hear, you need to hear it directly. I urge you to immediately contact a rabbi with whom you have a personal relationahip to talk this through.
One needs to investigate the conversion by your boyfriend's grandmother, if possible, to determine what actually did or did not take place. If you are right though that it was a non-halakhic conversion, as seems likely from your account, then Jewish law holds that you may not marry him. I am happy to acknowledge his strong Jewish identity and in no way want to impugn his commitment to Jewishness, but this is a matter of Jewish law, in which subjective feelings only go so far. No Orthodox rabbi would marry you without proof that the original conversion was valid unless your boyfriend himself is willing to convert. This far outweights any discussion of his receiving an aliyah or being counted in a minyan, which I want to ignore here in order to focus on the central feature of your question. You are from an Orthodox family and have been raised to respect Jewish law. If your boyfriend wants to make a life with you then I am hopeful that this is something he can appreciate as well.
I recognize that this may be very sensitive for your boyfriend, but there is no way around confronting it directly and honestly. The pain of doing so now is real, but less than the pain of dealing with it down the road after you have a non-Orthodox wedding or have children together. My strong recommendation to you is that you talk this over in person with a rabbi you know and consult with him about how to approach your boyfriend--it may be that you want to speak with your boyfriend and rabbi together. One way of thinking about conversion in a context like this is that it is not about starting over, the way a non-Jew would need to do in order to become Jewish, but about bringing a person's strong subjective reality into sync with the realities of Torah and Jewish law. It can be a completion of a process begun long ago, and his prior Jewish experience and commitment may make this easier in some ways, especially if there is any reason for doubt about the nature of the original conversion.
If you do not deal with this openly and honestly now you will not only have a marriage that is not in accordance with Jewish law and not recognized by halakha but you will also be putting your future children in the position of needing to choose between their own father and the Judaism that you and your family have been committed to. If your boyfriend is not Jewish according to halakha and not interested in becoming so, I can only advise you to respect his decision and move on.
best wishes
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Question: What is the original 'health' rationale for the Jewish law about not eating milk and meat together?
You write to ask “what is the original health rationale” for the Jewish law about not eating meat and milk together?
While I have frequently heard that the dietary laws of Kashrut serve health purposes (or once did) the truth is that there is no strong reason to think that the rationale for these laws was ever health. Let me clarify.
The Torah prohibits “seething a kid in its mother’s milk.” From tradition, and from the repetition of this commandment three times in the Bible (Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34: 26, Deuteronomy 14: 21), we learn that this refers to a prohibition on cooking, eating or even benefiting from a mixture of milk and meat (i.e. selling it for money). For observant Jews, this is part of Torah law which is accepted on both divine and rabbinic authority (Hullin 113b, 115b). I cannot work at selling cheese burgers, for example, even if I never eat them, since this would be a form of benefit. This was later extended by the rabbis to milk and chicken.
The Torah never claims that meat and milk are prohibited for reasons of physical health. The Torah does however say several times in connection with the dietary laws that their purpose is sanctity, which is generally taken to mean being set apart the way God is set apart. “Be thou therefore holy as I the Lord your God am holy.” Holiness is not the same as ethics (though it presumes ethics) and is not the same as physical health, though I also assume that it would not be contrary to physical health to observe the dietary laws. These laws promote self-discipline and control of appetite and Jewish mystics (but not philosophers) have sometimes argued that forbidden foods are spiritually stultifying. This could be true, though I don’t know of any independent evidence for it, but it is beside the point from a Jewish law point of view. As Maimonides writes in his Eight Chapters, a person should say, “I really wish I could eat that forbidden food, but what can I do, since my Father in Heaven has forbidden me!” Maimonides does not think this is true, say, of murder or theft, which any rational and moral person ought to feel repelled by. My point is that, at least for Maimonides and those who follow him, a commandment like not eating milk and meat together does not have to have an obvious reason in order to be binding. We observe it because we are committed to the Torah. Reasons do not need to be known in order to be effective.
This does not of course mean that one cannot find a rationale if one works enough at it or that such rationales are without significance. Maimonides himself felt that many of these laws were based on the rejection of ancient idolatrous practices (Guide of the Perplexed III: 48). Others however have suggested a different kind of moral rationale. Milk, these writers suggest, is a product that sustains life, and they argue that even though we are permitted to eat meat, still we ought to cringe at the irony of cooking it in a substance designed to nurture and support young animals. Thus the language of not seething a kid in its mother’s milk is meant to convey something more than the actual law of not cooking meat and milk together—it helps to suggest the reason for the law’s institution. Though we are permitted to eat meat, we ought to be developing our moral sensitivity even for animals and one way of doing this is to keep separate these different kinds of foods. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook writes in several places (see his essay “On Reasons for the Commandments” translated in Ben Zion Bokser’s excellent volume) that this project of sensitization to suffering should continue to grow and develop and may one day lead us to eschew eating meat altogether.
I hope that you find this answer helpful. This is the perspective I find most meaningful from the perspective of Orthodox Judaism. It is interesting that this approach is quite compatible with that suggested by some modern anthropologists, and I refer you to the article “The Abominations of Leviticus” by Mary Douglas, which is published in her fine volume, “Purity and Danger.” For Douglas, the dietary prohibitions have essentially a symbolic meaning, and one that was conducive the acquisition of holiness in biblical terms.
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Question: Do women have the same obligation as men in regards to daily prayer in Judaism?
You wrote to ask whether women have the same obligation in daily prayer as men according to Judaism. This is actually a more complex question than it might seem, because there is disagreement among authorities how to understand anyone’s obligation for daily prayer.
Jewish law obligations are divided broadly between those that have the authority of the Torah (biblical commandments) and those that have the authority of later enactment by the rabbis (rabbinic commandments). Understanding this is key to understanding the debate that unfolds about women’s prayer.
Maimonides leads a group of early authorities who think that there is a biblical obligation for all Jews to pray to God at least once a day, in whatever language or format and at whatever time they choose (See his Hilkhot Tefillah 1:1-2). According to the Torah, in other words, a person can pray in whatever manner they choose, though their prayers should include words of praise, request and thanks. This obligation applies to both men and women equally. However, the later rabbis, according to Maimonides, added specifications. For men, they specified a fixed, Hebrew liturgy (preserved in the traditional prayer book) as well as fixed times for prayer in the morning, afternoon and evening. Thus, the rabbinic obligation to pray is a “time bound positive commandment” from which women are typically exempt. This is the approach adopted by Rabbi Joseph Caro’s Shulchan Arukh (Orah Hayyim 106:1), according to which women need to pray once a day in whatever language they choose, whereas men must pray three times a day from a fixed liturgy. There are many contemporary women who follow this view.
There was however also a completely different view of prayer articulated by another group of early authorities, including Nahmanides, Rashi and others. They argued that there is no biblical commandment to pray every day (though when you do pray there is a commandment to pray only to God) but only a rabbinic one. Some authorities who held to this view felt that women’s exemption from time-bound, positive commandments does not apply at all to rabbinic enactments and that women should therefore be obligated in daily prayer just like men. Others held that the exemption does apply to rabbinic enactments, but that prayer is exceptional because of the sheer importance of begging God for mercy. In this latter view, women are obligated to pray each day from the fixed liturgy, though not exactly in the same way as men are. They may, for instance, only be obligated once or possibly twice a day—both customs that are also well represented among contemporary women (See Arukh Ha-Shulchan OH 106:7).
I am sure that this is more detail than you sought when you asked the question, but it is important to understand that there are many different practices in this area of Jewish law and that this stems to some extent from a legitimate diversity of opinion among scholars. Some women pray at home in their own language, others follow the set liturgy once or twice (more rarely three times) a day and some make a point of attending daily public services. Sometimes, women have also gathered to pray together separately from men, as many do today in all-female school settings. It is wise to consult the custom and halakhic authority of your own community.
Chava Weissler’s book Voices of the Matriarchs (Beacon Press, 1998) contains an excellent historical account of vernacular Yiddish prayers or techines that were composed by East European Jewish women for different occasions and some of these have also recently been translated into English.
You asked about legal obligations but at the end of the day, prayer is also about finding ways to draw close to our creator, our community, and our heritage. Cultivating a prayerful life is a fundamental challenge in our society no matter what your gender, and I wish you every blessing and success in doing so.
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Question: My mother isn't/wasn't Jewish, my father is. I was raised Reform, had a bat mitzvah, [was Jewishly educated, celebrated holidays, identify as Jewish, participated in the Jewish community, did not participate in or celebrate any other faith or religion,] etc. If I have children with a man recognized as fully Jewish, how would they be seen in the eyes of Israel and the American Jewish community (particularly the Conservative movement)? How stable are Israel's laws around this -- could they change in 10 years? What about halachah (Jewish law)? I would really appreciate an answer, even if it's not what I want to hear. Thank you!
Your inquiry cuts to the heart of one of the most difficult and potentially painful chapters in the development of modern Judaism. I am going to answer you as honestly and straightforwardly as possible, with the understanding that this is not just your own private destiny at stake here, but really that of the Jewish people as a whole.
I have written this slowly and with hesitation, because I am enormously sympathetic to your predicament and to the possibility that my response may sound harsh or unfeeling--it is not meant to be.
The short answer is that Jewish law will not recognize the children (or grandchildren) of a Jewish man and non-Jewish woman as Jews without benefit of conversion. This is universal in the Orthodox world and my understanding is that it is true of the Conservative Jewish world as well. The State of Israel is somewhat more complicated, because even though the children of a non-Jewish woman will not be registered as Jewish, they do in theory qualify for immigration rights because of their Jewish grandparent. In practice however, they may face difficulties. I do not envision this changing in the next ten years or most likely, ever (I say most likely because some important thinkers have held open the possibility that one day a renewed Sanhedrin might rethink even fundamental halakhic concepts and rulings-- see Rav Kook's 'Moreh Nevuchei Ha-Zman', chapters 8-12). I do not, similarly, envision Israeli law changing any time soon, though of course one cannot say what future political changes might bring.
It is important to understand that this is not about racial/biological distinctions. Though things may well have been different during certain parts of the biblical period (many stories in Genesis, for example, before the imposition of halakhkic norms, seem to assume patrilineal descent), it has been universally accepted by Jewish legal authorities that while tribal identity (i.e. Cohen, Levi, Israelite) is conveyed by the father, Jewishness is fundamentally conveyed by the mother. This is not something that Orthodox Jews believe they have the capacity to change just because social conditions seem to require it. It is rather something perceived as basic to our covenantal relationship with God, in which certain things have been mandated and are non-negotiable.
Whether or not you share that understanding, you may find it helpful to compare the issue of Jewishness with the example of how someone becomes a citizen of a country such as the United States. There are various paths to citizenship, such as naturalization, being born to American parents abroad or being born on American soil. But without one of those three paths as defined by American law, no amount of "feeling American" or being raised as an American will make you an American citizen, period. Every community has a limited number of paths to full citizenship, and traditional Judaism sees itself not just as a set of religious beliefs or rituals but also as a well-defined people, with all of the benefits and responsibilities that may entail. Indeed, that is why, even though I have great respect for the right of Reform Jews to live and worship in the way that seems right to them, I cannot help feeling that by unilaterally changing the definition of Jewishness to include patrilineal descent, the movement made a huge mistake that creates unfair burdens not just for people like you but for the Jewish people as a whole. This is one of the great fault lines in American Jewish life and will lead over time to deep schisms not just in religious belief or practice but more fundamentally in the sense of connectedness and peoplehood among different Jewish groups.
Your case is particularly painful because I understand that your father was Jewish and that you were also raised as a Jew. That must make this whole conversation extremely unnerving or even offensive to you. Yet I ask you to recognize that Jews who consider themselves faithful to halakha cannot simply will the law to be otherwise than what has been handed down to us.
The traditional Jewish response to a situation like yours is that someone who wants to bring their own existential sense of Jewishness and their halakhic status as a Jew better into sync has open to him or her the option of formal conversion. I want to be clear that I am not advocating this: conversion is an intensely personal decision that you need to think about in consultation with a local rabbi who knows you, but in a case like yours, with a Jewish father and a Jewish upbringing, it may be something you will one day want to consider, particularly if the issue you raise about children being Jewish is important to you.
Jewish Values Online is a great service to the Jewish community, but one thing it is not is an opportunity to forge personal bonds or to look a questioner in the eye to get a sense of who they are and convey your own human understanding of their situation. With that in mind, I apologize for any distress my answer may cause. May we all live to see our eyes opened in truth and kindness.
Wishing you nothing but blessings,
Don Seeman
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Question: Is “freedom of speech” a Torah/Jewish value as well? Or does Judaism believe that there should be a limit on what we say?
Is “freedom of speech” a Torah/Jewish value as well? Or does Judaism believe that there should be a limit on what we say?
Freedom of speech is an important value. We can hardly imagine a democratic form of government without it. And long before any Western constitution was written, the prophets of Israel were demonstrating (possibly for the first time in history) the importance of speaking truth to power and communicating unpopular ideas. This was indeed one of the precedents that the American founders had in mind when they sought to limit the power of government by guaranteeing broad rights to political and religious speech even when it is unpopular.
Yet every system of government also confronts the need for some limits to freedom of speech. The United States Sedition Act of 1918 was an attempt to prohibit speech that would interfere with the war effort or with military recruitment. It was repealed in 1920 and is not remembered very favorably today, but my point is that American courts and governments have struggled with this issue throughout our history. One criteria that has gained traction today is the idea that it is not permissible to “yell Fire! in a crowded theater” because of the harm to many people that would ensue. Yet even outside the relatively broad boundaries of legally protected speech, Americans continue to debate vociferously how much freedom of speech is good for society and how much they will tolerate in different settings. For example, the government cannot penalize hate speech, but we increasingly expect private institutions to do so, even to the point of depriving people of their livelihoods for speech considered hateful (think of Don Imus or Helen Thomas). So it would not be right to say that “American values” simply promote freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is an important value, but it is not the only one and not always even the dominant one in American public life.
Now, comparing American values and Jewish ones on a matter like this is a little bit like comparing apples and automobiles. The American value of free speech is usually discussed in the context of a constitutional protection against government interference. It relates primarily to political speech in a well-organized state that is now over 200 years old. But Jewish approaches to speech and its power relate not just to the government but to the religious and ethical development of individuals, and not just to life in an organized state but also to nearly two millennia or wandering and exile in some of the worst situations imaginable. Another way of saying this would be that American freedom of speech is mostly about individual liberty and limits to the power of the state; the rules of speech in Judaism are mostly about human virtue and ethical attainment.
This makes Judaism stricter in many cases than American public culture, because the issue is not what the government can punish you for but what speech you should avoid for your own sake.
Some forms of speech are unambiguously prohibited under Jewish law. Cursing your parents falls under this category. So does cursing God or a judge or spreading slander about another person. Where Jewish courts are functioning, a person can be penalized for these crimes. Under Jewish law, moreover, there is absolutely such a thing as “victimless crime.” The Torah itself prohibits cursing a deaf person, even though they cannot hear the curse or have their feelings hurt by it. But there are also many other forms of speech that are considered bad or degrading and to be avoided even though it is not obvious that a court of Jewish law would take interest in them. Examples are speaking negatively about someone where there is no financial harm, or speaking lewdly and immodestly, or speaking in a way that causes a desecration of the name of God—like yelling at people in the name of religion. Because Jewish morality is concerned with making you the best person you can be and not just controlling the power of the state, it makes sense to tell people to avoid speech that is bad for them or bad for society. When it comes to the rules of gossip, whole books have been written going into great detail about how careful one has to be to avoid even unintentional gossip, because of the corrosive and often ignored consequences of such behavior on human communities.
So does Judaism value free speech? Absolutely. We depend upon it for the democracy on which we all rely (and we have seen what the absence of democracy means to everyone, especially Jews). In the Sanhedrin or Supreme Court of old, the most junior scholars had to speak first so that they would not be swayed or intimidated by their more senior colleagues. But do we believe in limits to what should be said? Again, absolutely. Life and death, as the saying goes, lie in the power of the tongue. Yet while piety requires that we should control our own speech very closely, it also requires that we should be cautious about any attempt by the government or even by religious communities to suppress speech through force. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, who was the chief rabbi of the Jewish Yishuv in the land of Israel during the 1930’s wrote in one of his letters that the coercive powers of the state and of Jewish courts are naturally curtailed in an era such as our own, in which the hand of God is not obvious to everyone, and there is therefore a certain divine providence in our inability today to enforce some of the rules that would have been enforced in Talmudic or Medieval times. I have always found this to be an inspiring approach, because while it reminds me that my own freedom of speech should be limited by whatever wisdom and humility I may attain, the freedom of speech of others needs to be respected.
With blessings,
Don Seeman
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