MICHAEL WYSCHOGROD
MICHAEL WYSCHOGROD A nonpracticing atheist Jew remains a Jew; but what about a Jew who converts to Christianity f In recent years, the "Who is a Jew" question has arisen in the context of...
...But that is not the same as denying their Jewishness...
...He points out that "four or five hundred years ago, to be a Frenchman was to be a Catholic [and] ...the idea of a Frenchman who wasn't Catholic would have seemed bizarre and perhaps even incomprehensible...
...However, persons entering Israel under the Law of Return whose conversions were not Orthodox are still not fully in the clear...
...A Jew can incur disabilities such as not being accepted as a witness in a rabbinic court or not being counted toward a minyan in a synagogue...
...There is no way for a secular gentile who is not prepared to undergo any kind of religious conversion to become a Jew...
...I consider Father Daniel a Jew because a Jew cannot free oneself from the obligation to obey the Torah's commandments...
...He survived the war, for a time hidden in a 'In Israel, all marriages are performed by religious authorities—Jewish, Moslem or Christian...
...There is no doubt that Israeli citizenship is compatible with any religion or lack of religion...
...But it is here that the crux of the paradox resides...
...Presumably, Jews are prepared to refer to an exgentile as a Jew if he has undergone religious conversion and Jews are prepared to cease calling an ex Jew a Jew if he has joined another religion...
...The only way a non-Jew can become a Jew is through religious conversion...
...Either way, it is time to recognize that it takes more than baptism to change a Jew into a gentile, Michael Wyschogrod is professor of philosophy at Baruch College of the City University of New York...
...It would then, for example, not be a sin for such a person to work on Shabbat, since gentiles are allowed to perform work on Shabbat...
...But the issue also arises in connection with the Israeli Law of Return, which gives every Jew in the world the right to enter Israel as an immigrant...
...Israeli secular law thus declares that entry into Jewishness is possible only by the religious route...
...For the purpose of this law, a Jew is considered anyone who was born to a Jewish mother or who has converted to Judaism...
...From the halachic perspective, once a person is a Jew, nothing can change that status...
...The potential for unpleasant complications is thus ever present...
...But it is a sin for a Jew to work on Shabbat even if converted to Christianity...
...Under Israeli law, someone who is a Jew cannot lose that identity except by conversion to another religion...
...In 1962, the "Who is a Jew" issue came up in another context...
...The majority opinion, written by Justice Moshe Silberg, conceded that under halachah, Brother Daniel was a Jew...
...It is thus conceivable that a person recognized as Jewish under the Law of Return may not be so recognized by the rabbinic courts for the purpose of marriage...
...From his viewpoint, there can be Christian and Moslem Jews because Jewishness is a national identity compatible with any religion or lack of religion...
...It is clear that there are Arab (Christian and Moslem) Israelis but Cohen extends this to Jewish identity...
...He writes on Jewish theology, history and philosophy...
...The supreme court of Israel rejected Brother Daniel's appeal by a vote of four to one, with Justice Haim Cohen dissenting...
...As we have already seen, the court grounded its decision in common usage...
...Jewishness is a national identity having no contemporary relation to religion...
...He adds: "Today...France is a fully secularized society in which Catholicism has its rightful place, but in which it is perfectly possible for a Frenchman not continued on page 15 "Cohen is here not speaking of Israeli but Jewish identity...
...Under Israeli secular law, as things stand now, both entry into and exit from Jewishness involve a religious dimension...
...Therefore, a Jew and, for example, a Moslem cannot marry each other in Israel unless one converts to the religion of the other...
...But such disabilities do not change a Jew into a non-Jew...
...For centuries, Jews have told the (mythical...
...The logic is paradoxical: A secular court, because it is a secular court, imposes a religious test (nonconversion to Christianity) on the Jewishness of a person that the halachah does not impose...
...Should they wish to marry in Israel, they come under the jurisdiction of the rabbinic courts,* which are under no obligation to accept the Law of Return's definition of Jewishness...
...The dissenting justice, Cohen, could not cope with a paradox of such magnitude and concluded that Brother Daniel should be recognized as a Jew because, with the creation of Israel, the old norms changed and the only valid measure of whether an inhabitant of Israel is Jewish or not should be his or her subjective perception, in good faith, of belonging to the Jewish people.* In "What Is a Jew...
...Brother Daniel's appeal was nevertheless turned down because, reasoned the court, Israel was a secular state and the supreme court was a secular court and had to interpret the Law .of Return's use of the word Jew not in accordance with halachah but by its common usage among Jews...
...The secular supreme court of Israel feels duty bound to decide the issue of who is a Jew not on the basis of halackah but on the basis of popular usage...
...Brother Daniel was born Oswald Rufheisen to ajewish family in Mir, Poland, in 1922...
...For Halkin, as for Justice Cohen, Christian or Moslem Jews ought to be every bit as thinkable as Christian or Moslem Frenchmen...
...In such usage, wrote Silberg, "a Jew who has converted to Christianity is no longer considered a Jew...
...If a Jew could cease to be a Jew, that person would escape the obligation to obey the commands of the Torah that are obligatory for all Jews...
...Halachically, Brother Daniel was therefore a Jew...
...WYSCHOCROD continued from page 12 to be a Catholic, too...
...In popular parlance, then, a converted Jew ceases to be a Jew even if halachah does not agree...
...To support this, Silberg cited the traditional Jewish abhorrence of apostasy and the enormous suffering visited historically on the Jewish people by the Catholic Church...
...It then decides that popular usage requires that a gentile who wishes to become a Jew must undergo a religious conversion and a Jew who wishes to cease being a Jew—in popular usage—can lose his Jewishness only by converting to another religion...
...Once in Israel, he applied for recognition as a Jewish immigrant under the Law of Return...
...He received ajewish education, joined a Zionist youth movement and was preparing to emigrate to Palestine when World War II broke out...
...After the war, he converted to Catholicism, became a Carmelite friar and tried to emigrate to Israel without success until 1958, when he received a Polish exit permit...
...Catholic monastery but later with a group of Russian partisans operating behind German lines...
...Further, it seems to me, so does popular Jewish usage...
...The majority opinion in the Brother Daniel case was wrong for two reasons...
...If popular usage considers religion central to Jewish identity, then halachah cannot be brushed aside and halachah considers a converted Jew a Jew...
...Popular usage, it seems, makes Jewishness a religious matter and thus we end up pretty much where we started...
...Both coming in and going out, religion, at least in the popular mind, seems to play an important role...
...The implication is perfecdy clear...
...He co-edited with Clemens Thoma Understanding Scripture: Explorations of Jewish and Christian Traditions of Interpretation (Paulist Press, 1987...
...But Jewish and Israeli identities cannot simply be fused since some Israelis are not Jews and many Jews are not Israelis...
...but what about a Jew who converts to Christianity f In recent years, the "Who is a Jew" question has arisen in the context of non-Orthodox conversions that the Israeli rabbinate has been reluctant to recognize...
...The principle is that, from the point of view of halachah, a Jew cannot cease being a Jew...
...However much he was a pope, in the popular Jewish mind he was also a Jew...
...If Jewishness is a national identity having no essential religious component, then how is Jewish identity related to Israeli identity...
...The question was whether Brother Daniel, born Oswald Rufheisen, was a Jew under the Law of Return...
...Because the law does not speak of conversion "according to halachah (religious law)the law has been interpreted by the Israeli courts to include all conversions, not only Orthodox ones...
...Halkin considers Brother (now Father) Daniel a Jew because for Halkin Jewishness is a nationality that can be combined with any religion...
...Under the Law of Return, this conversion need not be Orthodox but it must be performed under Jewish religious auspices recognized by Israel...
...A Secular Israeli View" (Congress Monthly, March/April 1990), Hillel Halkin picks up the Cohen dissent with great vigor...
...All attempts to add the words "according to halachah" to the Israeli law have failed (in large measure due to the intervention of American Jews), and that is where the matter stands at present...
...Earlier he had worked as an interpreter for the Gestapo, in which capacity he risked his life to smuggle arms and intelligence to the Jewish community of Mir...
...The same is true for exit from Jewishness...
...To put it mildly, Jews do not like converts...
...story of a medieval Jewish pope...
...A nonpracticing, atheist Jew remains a Jew, but the moment that person accepts Jesus as the savior, and especially if that person joins an established church, then that person ceases to be a Jew, as the majority opinion in the Brother Daniel case argued...
Vol. 15 • December 1990 • No. 6
