Responding to an Ancestral Voice: Thoughts on Being (or not being) Jewish

Recently re-read this beautiful book. Such an eloquent, honest, and deeply respectful exploration of his religion. I wish with all my heart that I could convince my dad to read it. But of course he won't. 

This second reading made me wonder (again) why I care, why I'm drawn to Judaism. From what I understand, I'm not considered Jewish, at least according to Orthodox and Conservative definitions. It's not just that I'm a Christian, which would make me apostate in their eyes regardless of heritage or ancestry. It's that my mother was not a Jew. 

I've struggled with this question ("who is a Jew?"), being the parent of three children of mixed ancestry. Their dad is Japanese, which makes them "half" Japanese racially. To suggest that their father's race has no bearing on their racial make-up is ridiculous. Yet that's what is said about me. I'm not a Jew racially even though my father is Jewish. And I'm not a Jew religiously because I believe Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. In order to be a Jew, I would need to convert (and reject Christianity).

A couple of weeks ago at church, there was a guest speaker who happens to be a Messianic Jew, i.e., a Jewish believer in Jesus, who was invited to speak briefly about Israel (he leads tours). In explaining how he, a Jew, came to believe in Yeshua (Jesus), the man said his mother was an Irish Catholic and his father an agnostic Jew. So technically, legally, I mean, he's not a Jew. That's what I was thinking. Later though, in explaining how he ended up living in Israel, he said that he was told that because he was Jewish, he was allowed to become an Israeli citizen. He was referring to something called the Law of Return ("aliyah") which, according to Wikipedia, is  

. . . Israeli legislation, passed on 5 July 1950, that gives Jews the right of return and the right to live in Israel and to gain Israeli citizenship. In 1970, the right of entry and settlement was extended to people with one Jewish grandparent or people married to a Jew, although they were not considered Jewish under Jewish law.

So this man, not legally a Jew, can be an Israeli citizen. 

And even though I'm not a Jew because my mother was not a Jew, my dad's parents were both Jewish, which means technically, I, too, have the "right of return." 

This is all a bit confusing, and to be honest, deep down I reject the notion that I'm not Jewish. Why I feel that way I can't really explain. Something keeps drawing me to learn more about this ancient religion. From Wouk's Epilogue, these passages stood out:

Maybe I'm responding to "this ancestral voice." But why? My sister, my brother, my father, who share this ancestry, why don't they respond in the same way? 

Wouk understands, and does not judge. I believe he wrote his book as much with them in mind as for people like me. 

I love this book.

Thinking a Second Time: Recommended Reading

Just finished this book by Dennis Prager, Think a Second Time, a collection of essays published in 1995. Though dated (wish he'd consider updating), it's still worth a look-see. I especially appreciated the selections in Part Three, dealing with questions related to good and evil, ethical monotheism, and belief in God after the Holocaust. 

A section in Part Two focuses on how idealists can be dangerous, and one chapter in particular was very good, "When Religion Makes People Cruel." Here he speaks to cruelty found in each of the major religions, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, and summarizes by quoting the 18th century rabbi Elija ben Shlomo Zalman Kremer (the Gaon of Vilna), who said, "Religion is like rain: it brings forth both beautiful flowers and poisonous weeds."

The last section of the book is devoted in its entirety to the case of Baby Richard, the young boy who was adopted at birth by a loving family, but was later returned to his birth father at age four and a half when the Illinois Supreme Court, by a vote of 5 to 1 (the majority all men, the dissenter, a woman), overturned lower court decisions and decided that the adoption was illegal. 

The story is a tragedy on many levels, the most poignant being that the court did not order that the child be permitted to have continued interaction with his adoptive family. Prager is particularly incensed about the issue of blood (i.e., genetics) taking precedence over family bonds, the societal trend towards the rights of the birth father ("the inseminator") over the rights of the child. He reserves his strongest vitriol for the five judges whom he refers to as evil men,  justifying the use of the word "evil" by recalling Hannah Arendt's use of phrase, "the banality of evil," the sub-title of her book about Adolf Eichmann. As Prager sees it, the evil perpetrated by the Illinois justices was not a deliberate, malicious evil but rather a "combination of mediocrity, willful ignorance of the consequences of one's actions, and an overriding...belief, " in this case, the belief in the inviolability of blood.

Baby Richard, whose real name is Danny Warburton (Warburton is the name of his adoptive family), is now presumably in his early 20's. This would be another good reason to update Prager's book. At the time of writing, the story was big news, and though there was some attempt by the media to report that Danny was doing very well, was adjusting to his new family, was happy, etc., it's obvious (to me) that there's no way this could have been determined so soon. Bob Greene of the Chicago Tribune was the journalist who covered the story at the time, and I don't know if he's done a follow-up story on the case. I see here that he's had some personal and professional issues in the last decade. 

I guess my next non-fiction book will be the text I've adopted for my fall English 50 class, The Norton Sampler: Short Essays for Composition, by Thomas Cooley. If Prager would update Think a Second Time, I'd seriously consider adopting that as a text. Thinking a second time could do these millennials a bit of good.