Two Aspects of Jewish Identity

Abstract

A public tumult was created not long ago in Israel when a fallen soldier of the Israel Defence Forces, a recent immigrant from the former Soviet Union, was buried at the edge of the military cemetery. His mother was a Christian, and neither she nor he had ever undergone any formal conversion ceremony. Because he was not Jewish, he was not buried among the Jewish soldiers. No one who was offended by this decision argued that he was technically Jewish by virtue of patrilineal decent or some non-Orthodox conversion ceremony. In fact, the whole issue was argued viscerally. The young man had come to Israel to throw in his lot with the Jewish people; he fought as a Jew, was killed as a Jew, and deserved to be buried as a Jew. To be sure, this argument resonated positively even among halakhically committed individuals, especially those who saw service in Tsahal (the Israeli Defence Forces) as part of their Israeli-Jewish identity. This was true despite the fact that allegiance to halakhic norms precludes accepting nontraditional definitions of Jewish identity. The nature of halakhic commitment demands subjugating personal feelings to objective halakhic requirements, but personal interrelationships can make it difficult to simply dismiss as a non-Jew someone who identifies Jewishly and either suffers as a or works loyally on behalf of the Jewish community. We shall argue here that Halakha does not necessarily insist that such an individual has absolutely no Jewish identity, his or her halakhic standing as a non-Jew notwithstanding. Some three decades ago the Who is a Jew debate had a very different face when Brother Daniel, a born who apostatized and