MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE by Michael Wolraich Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop |
When I was twelve years old, my father took a sabbatical in London, and our family moved from quiet, middle class Iowa City to London's buzzing if somewhat downtrodden Camden neighborhood. I enrolled in a "state school" called J.F.S. (Brits confusingly call their private academies "public schools".) I would walk to school by myself past the gloomy "estates" (housing projects) and the jumbled little shops of Kentish Town, shyly self-conscious in my blue blazer, gray sweater, and striped blue-and-gold tie.
But I would not put on my blue-and-gold beanie until I arrived at the school. A beanie is an unusual accessory in an English school uniform. Its significance is suggested by the full name of the school, Jews Free School. The "beanie" was a yarmulke.
Britain lacks the strict separation between church and state of the U.S. A third of its state-funded schools are religious. Most are Anglican or Catholic, but 37 are Jewish, seven Muslim, two Sikh, one Hindu, one Greek Orthodox, and one Seventh Day Adventist. The majority of my classes at J.F.S. were secular, but Hebrew study and a course called "Religious Knowledge" were required. The cafeteria was kosher, and we recited Jewish prayers several times a day. In addition to the state holidays, we also got the Jewish holidays off, and the school closed early on Fridays--my favorite part of attending a Jewish school.
J.F.S. is the news today. Britain's Supreme Court has ruled that it must change its admissions policy. J.F.S. only admits Jews, but that practice is not illegal in the U.K. What is illegal is the way J.F.S.'s admissions policy defined what it means to be a Jew. According to traditional Jewish law, if your mother is Jewish, you're Jewish, no matter what you believe. If she's not, then you're not, no matter what you believe. You can, however, convert to Judaism, though it's not nearly as easy as dunking your head and embracing God. There are various rituals and tests of knowledge required, and if you're male, you need to be circumcised. (The last requirement may partly explain why there are so few Jews in the world.)
The case in the news involves another twelve-year-old boy, known as M in court papers. His father is Jewish, his mother is Jewish, and I presume that M is circumcised. But M's mother was not born Jewish; she converted in a progressive Jewish synagogue. Since J.F.S.'s admissions policy only recognized Orthodox Jewish conversions, M's mother's conversion didn't count. Ipso facto, the school did not consider M to be Jewish and refused to admit him.
M sued. He lost. He appealed. The Court of Appeal found the school's admissions policy to be based not on religion, which is legal, but race, which is not, and ruled for M. J.F.S. appealed. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the ruling. J.F.S. has changed its admissions policy to use a "religious practice test" instead of the matrineal test.
The question of what it means to be a Jew is one of the most divisive questions within the Jewish community. Orthodox synagogues and organizations claim exclusive privilege in defining Jewish identity. For instance, under Israel's Law of Return, all Jews are allowed to settle in Israel and to become citizens. For most of Israel's history, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel had the authority to determine the validity of conversions according to Orthodox requirements. In 2005, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that non-Orthodox conversions outside Israel were also valid.
I have a younger sister who was too young to attend J.F.S. when we lived in London. She is adopted. As a Native American, we're pretty sure that her biological mother wasn't Jewish, Mormon theology notwithstanding. When I was young, I remember traveling to Des Moines, where my sister had a ritual bath called a mikvah and officially converted to Judaism under Orthodox rules. My parents explained that our synagogue, the only one in Iowa City, wasn't religious enough and that my sister needed the full conversion in case she someday decided to move to Israel or wanted to marry an Orthodox Jew. They weren't thinking about Jewish schools in England.
Comments
Not to drag Joseph the Latriner back into it, but aren't we all decendants of Naamah (Noah's wife)? If so, aren't well all Jewish? (Or, if she wasn't Jewish, aren't none of us Jewish?)
Maybe I shouldn't try to bring logic into it, though…
by Nebton on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 3:36pm
You haven't been reading your Latriner very closely. Noah wasn't Jewish. Abraham was the one who made the covenant with God. Only his descendants (and officially sanctioned converts) are allowed to attend Jewish schools.
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 3:40pm
Well, technically then, aren't we really talking about Sarah's descendents? IIRC, there's one branch of Abraham's descendents not included in that group…
by Nebton on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 4:02pm
Good point.
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 6:03pm
Which of course means the very first Jewish mother was old enough to be a bubbe. This explains so much.
by Doctor Cleveland on Fri, 12/18/2009 - 12:42pm
Also, couldn't God have stopped a lot of this fighting if he had started with Noah instead of with Abraham?
P.S. Great info about the beanie. I'd always wondered how that got started, but never enough to actually look it up or anything.
by Nebton on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 4:27pm
Just for the record, Mormons do not believe Native Americans are Jewish, especially by the matrilinear standard you describe. Even the wikipedia article you cite does not state that Mormons believe Native Americans are Jewish, so I'm not sure where you're coming from...
Also, while I recognize that you were joking about circumcision being the reason there are so few Jewish males, in the U.S. roughly 65% of men are circumcised. Probably more information than you ever wanted to know... :)
by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 12/17/2009 - 10:57pm
I apologize for failing to introduce the Mormon perspective on the "Who is a Jew" question. While the Book of Mormon suggests that at least some Native Americans descend from the Israelite tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, many Mormons believe that only the descendants of the tribe Judah count as Jews. Some also note that members of Manasseh and Ephraim descend from Joseph and his Egyptian wife, hence Anonymous's matrilineal point.
But Mormon ideas on this point is somewhat at odds with Jewish doctrine. Jews certainly recognize descendants of tribes other than Judah as Jews. In addition, the rule of matrilineal descent criterion wasn't adopted until Roman times. Many Bible era Israelite men married non-Jews, including Judah, whose wife was a Canaanite. Thus, if Jews were defined by matrineal descent from Judah, there wouldn't be any.
If we want to consider the hypothetical response from Orthodox Jewry to proof that Native Americans descend from the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, we have an excellent example to work with. The Bnei Menashe of India claim descent from Manasseh. Though historians are dubious, one of Israel's chief rabbis declared the claim to be valid, and the Bnei Menashe have been allowed to return to Israel. That said, before coming to Israel, the Bnei Menashe had to officially convert to "modern" Judaism, as have other lost communities, such as the Falasha of Ethiopia, so one could conceivably argue that before conversion, they weren't Jewish or fully Jewish or whatever.
by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 12/18/2009 - 2:57pm
Well, I'm all for the religious practice test, especially in a state-funded school.
I would have converted to Judaism, Genghis, but the rabbi turned me down twice and I got the hint.
by Doctor Cleveland on Fri, 12/18/2009 - 12:39pm
They say that the third time's a charm.
(For those who don't get Cleveland's quip, you have to ask a rabbi three times before he or she agrees to help you convert to Judaism.)
by Michael Wolraich on Fri, 12/18/2009 - 3:06pm
Thanks for the explanation, Genghis. That's one of the very few times that a joke needed explaining (for me, at least) and yet was actually funny after the explanation.
by Nebton on Fri, 12/18/2009 - 3:16pm
Matrilineal descent as the basis for determining Jewishness is one of the tenents of Judaism I despise. Given how dramatically the religion's numbers have fallen over the past century, you would think it would be more accepting of all comers who desire to practice it or even identify with it. Matrilineal descent, based almost wholly on the fact that rabbis did not trust spouses to be faithful, is just one of the many obstacles that Judaism puts up that reinforces its ridiculous assertion of being an exclusive club of 'the chosen ones'. I appreciate the fact Judaism discourages evangelism, and embraces tolerance to a larger degree than the other Western religions, but that doesn't have to go hand in hand with making people who consider themselves or wish to be Jewish go through numerous and potentially hurtful hoops to prove themselves 'worthy.'
by Deadman on Tue, 12/22/2009 - 12:46pm
To be fair, matrilineal descent is also about expecting Jewish wives to be raped by, say, marauding Cossacks. Or if we want to go back, the Romans, the Hellenic Greeks, the Babylonians, the etc.
If you're a subject people long enough, you get used to the fact that the conqueror (whoever it is) sometimes impregnates women whether those women consent or not. And what are you going to do with those babies? So matrilineal descent has had a very real upside through long stretches of Jewish history.
by Doctor Cleveland on Tue, 12/22/2009 - 1:49pm