Proving Jewishness

March 3, 2008 - 8:34 AM by Stephanie

This NY Times Magazine article from yesterday’s paper is making the rounds in blogland so we are spreading the share.

It’s about the perennial “Who is a Jew?” debate in Israel, specifically in matters of proving one’s “Jewishness” when relocating to the country. In Israel this happens when coming up against the rabbinical courts prior to marriage or during a divorce. Talk to almost anyone and you’ll find a personal story about rabbinical court cross-examination.

And it’ll be a sob story. Because often people who have merrily skipped along throughout their lives attending private day school, Sunday school, shul on Saturdays and duking it out in-between with non-Semitic loving classmates over Semitic origins, leave Israel’s rabbinical courts in tears when asked to provide sometimes obscure or impossible-to-find documentation proving Jewishness.

An excerpt from the article:

In recent years, the state’s Chief Rabbinate and its branches in each Israeli city have adopted an institutional attitude of skepticism toward the Jewish identity of those who enter its doors. And the type of proof that the rabbinate prefers is peculiarly unsuited to Jewish life in the United States. The Israeli government seeks the political and financial support of American Jewry. It welcomes American Jewish immigrants. Yet the rabbinate, one arm of the state, increasingly treats American Jews as doubtful cases: not Jewish until proved so.

Go here to get more…Worth the read.

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