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Black-Jewish Relations. Christian-Jewish Relations. The mother, on the other hand, will always see her child, no matter how old he may be, as the baby she bore. And what, child of my womb? She always looks upon her child as upon a baby who needs her help and company, and whom she has to protect and shield. The mother can never forget the biological fact that her child was once a part of her, that she gave him her blood and that she brought him into the world with suffering and pain.
I gave you life. We together were involved in the same organic processes. The Bible employs these two archetypes in order to describe the ways that God relates to the Jewish people. Let Israel wait for the Eternal from henceforth and forever. T his view of the distinctive power of motherhood finds further expression in the rabbinic literature. In the Talmud and Midrash, the rabbis expanded on the biblical conception of mothers as more naturally inclined to bestow a nurturing love upon their children.
The women of Israel are portrayed as the saviors of Jewish continuity, who desired to have children when their husbands were reluctant to do so:. No, nowhere—so taught R. He, as is well known, was the most eminent man of his generation.
At that, all the others divorced their wives. For Pharaoh has decreed only against the males, while you decree against both males and females.
Pharaoh decreed only concerning this world, while you decree concerning both this world and the world to come. Now, since Pharaoh is a wicked man, there is doubt whether his decree will or will not be fulfilled; but since you are a righteous man, your decree is sure to be fulfilled. When they went to draw water, the Holy One for their sake caused so many small fish to be scooped up into their pitchers that only half of what they drew up was water and the other half fish.
They would then heat two pots, one with hot water and the other with fish, both of which they brought to their husbands in the field. There the women washed their husbands, anointed them, fed them, and gave them to drink. There, lying secluded between mounds in the fields, they responded to their men. In the picture painted by the midrash, the Jewish mother emerges as savior of the Jewish family. Here, too, we see the fundamental connection that the sages drew between motherhood and Jewish continuity.
Jewish women are depicted as keepers of the most basic trust, that of preserving and continuing Jewish life from one generation to the next. Indeed, the rabbis recognized the significance of these diverse parental roles, and gave them resonance within a conception of divinity that combined both masculine and feminine elements.
This is related directly to the conception of motherly love. And behind every father, erect or stooped, in playful or stern mood, walks malka kadisha , the Holy King. This is not mysticism. It is halacha. A child experiences his mother as the primary source of nurturing in his life, while the father is experienced as educator. A child is therefore more naturally inclined to revere his mother, and to fear his father:.
Judah the Prince said: It is revealed and known to the Creator that a son honors his mother more than his father, as she sways him by her tender words. Shimon the son of Yohai asked R. Eleazar the son of R. Eleazar replied: Yes. Said R. Shimon: How does it go? Eleazar: The verse may be understood by the parable of a king who had an only daughter whom he loved exceedingly.
Shimon the son of Yohai [upon hearing this] rose, kissed R. Eleazar on the brow, and said: Had I come into the world only to hear this interpretation from you, it would have been enough for me. Jewish law asserts that the father is given the primary responsibility in training the child to develop an independent moral and religious existence. At the same time, the halacha affirms that the natural familial bond is first and foremost forged through gestation and parturition.
The mother provides a bodily, familial link to herself, and thereby to her Jewish family. One descended from a Jewish father but a non-Jewish mother may be genetically linked to a Jew, but has a much stronger familial connection to one who is not a member of the Jewish family.
Interestingly, this created the possibility that someone who had a Jewish mother, but had not been raised Jewish and had not had any public religious acts of identification such as a Jewish baby-naming ceremony , a bar or bat mitzvah , or a Jewish confirmation service could theoretically be regarded as a non-Jew despite his or her lineage. However, many rabbis recognize lineage alone. Although the general idea of the resolution was widely accepted within the Reform movement, there was considerable dissatisfaction with the wording of the resolution and confusion over its implications.
In , the CCAR created an member task force to interpret and develop guidelines for the successful implementation of the patrilineal descent policy.
The patrilineal descent resolution provided a viable solution for couples who felt comfortable with their personal religious differences but wanted to raise their children with a singular religious faith. While Jewish children had always been asked to prepare for their bar and bat mitzvahs, their Jewishness was never contingent upon successful completion of that ceremony or any other. The Patrilineal Descent Resolution shifted the emphasis from birth to conscious choice.
Tens of thousands of people have been raised as Jews because of the legitimacy accorded them as a result of this resolution. However, patrilineal Jews are likely to encounter problems later in life if they decide to become more traditional in their observance. A problem arises if Reform Jews who are Jewish by patrilineal descent choose to participate in ritual or celebrations at more observant synagogues. Can they be called up for an aliyah? Can they help to form a minyan the quorum of 10 Jews required for many prayers?
In the past year, the organization has seen up to 50 cases where families have been asked to undergo DNA tests to certify their Jewishness. Those being asked to take these tests, Farber told me, are mostly Russian-speaking Israelis, members of an almost 1 million-strong immigrant community who began moving to Israel from countries of the former Soviet Union in the s. Due to the fact that Jewish life was forcefully suppressed during the Soviet era, many members of this community lack the necessary documentation to prove Jewishness through matrilineal descent.
This means that although most self-identify as Jewish, hundreds of thousands are not considered so by the Rabbinate, and routinely have their Jewish status challenged when seeking religious services, including marriage. For almost two decades, Farber and his colleagues have advocated for this immigrant community in the face of what they see as targeted discrimination. In cases of marriage, Farber acts as a type of rabbinical lawyer, pulling together documentation and making a case for his clients in front of a board of rabbinical judges.
He fears that DNA testing will place even more power in the hands of the Rabbinate and further marginalize the Russian-speaking community. Despite public outrage and protests in central Tel Aviv, the Rabbinate have not indicated any intention of ending DNA testing, and reports continue to circulate in the Israeli media of how the test is being used. One woman allegedly had to ask her mother and aunt for genetic material to prove that she was not adopted.
Another man was asked to have his grandmother, sick with dementia, take a test. Boris Shindler, a political activist and active member of the Russian-speaking community, told me that he believes that the full extent of the practice remains unknown, because many of those who have been tested are unwilling to share their stories publicly out of a sense of shame. But she is too humiliated to go to the press with this.
What offends Shindler most is that the technique is being used to single out his community, which he sees as part of a broader stigmatization of Russian-speaking immigrants in Israeli society as unassimilated outsiders and second-class citizens.
As well as being deeply humiliating, Shindler told me that there is confusion around what being genetically Jewish means.
But according to Yosef Carmel, an Orthodox rabbi and co-head of Eretz Hemdah, a Jerusalem-based institute that trains rabbinical judges for the Rabbinate, this is a misunderstanding of how the DNA testing is being used. He explained that the Rabbinate are not using a generalized Jewish ancestry test, but one that screens for a specific variant on the mitochondrial DNA — DNA that is passed down through the mother — that can be found almost exclusively in Ashkenazi Jews.
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