Legally, morally, and in terms of proper policy. I’m interested in the Rabbi’s view regarding the person who ought to receive citizenship in Israel, if you were the one responsible for setting the policy.
A Jew according to Jewish law? A Jew according to the Nuremberg Laws? Someone who benefits the state economically? Someone who identifies with it and is willing to immigrate to Israel?
Is the current policy in light of the Law of Return acceptable to the Rabbi? What do you think about the view that only Jews according to Jewish law should be eligible for citizenship—but not someone whose father is a non-Jew?
Thanks.

I would be very happy if only a Jew according to Jewish law were accepted here. But that doesn’t seem practical to me with the current makeup of the population. I’m also against coercion. In the current situation I’m very much in favor of separating religion and state, and proposing a new civil package deal (a state of all its citizens). That would put the secular public in a position where they would have to define for themselves who is a Jew / Israeli, and of course there would have to be registration of who is Jewish (according to Jewish law) and who is Israeli.

I’d be glad if the Rabbi would explain why you’d be happy if only halakhically Jewish people came here.
How and why is Jewish law relevant to this question?
What’s the logic that someone who, for example, hates the State of Israel would be entitled to come to Israel just because his mother is Jewish, but someone who identifies with the state but whose father is a non-Jew Actually would not?
To what extent can the Rabbi’s view not be derived from a halakhic obligation, and therefore it isn’t clear to me why not choose a criterion that would be more useful for sustaining a state

In my view, that is the criterion for Jewish nationality. There is no separation between Jewish law and nationality, and therefore that is what defines my people. But as stated, this is my view, which is not accepted by most of the public, so it doesn’t speak to the state as it exists today.
If he hates the state, then he should be dealt with within our own framework. Even if my son hated the family, he would still be my son, and I would try to deal with him in my own home.

There’s also the consideration that it’s preferable that people who aren’t Jewish according to Jewish law not immigrate, because that causes assimilation and doubtful converts (all the wink-wink conversion cases, and beyond that complete atheists who fool the religious courts).
Although in some cases this could be arranged (if we’re talking about a slapdash convert who just can’t be bothered to observe commandments), and give him the status of a resident alien—and then they would marry among themselves, and presumably most would end up being absorbed through Orthodox conversions after a few generations.

By the way, I think the Rabbi’s view actually is accepted by most of the public in one way or another.
It’s no accident that even complete atheists feel the need to lie and convert as a fiction.
This law is completely idiotic and it’s a shame reality made it so, in my opinion.
It would prevent a lot of drunkenness and prostitution in the state (sorry, but that’s the truth from my familiarity with the population—the younger generation of those mixed people suffer from poor upbringing in the homes themselves, coming from a primitive and abusive culture, and in addition they don’t find their place outside, which ends up harming everyone, including them).

Why would secular people have more trouble defining who is a Jew / Israeli than the problems the Swiss have in Switzerland?
As for the Law of Return, you could simply not apply it to converts, or require conversion approved by respected bodies around the world (and let them rack their brains over it. If they see there’s an excessive influx of undesirable people, as mentioned, the law could be canceled for converts. I always amuse myself with the thought that all the Palestinians might decide to convert, and then the tables would turn and they’d start specifically looking for the back of whoever is stringent in conversions today to hide behind).

If there’s no separation between Jewish law and nationality, what makes a secular person Jewish?

Rational Relatively, forgive me, but you’re living in a movie (forgive my French). Halakhically kosher Jewish women aren’t great saints in these areas either—and that’s also from deep familiarity with the secular world. A Jew is not better than a non-Jew simply by virtue of being Jewish.

I didn’t get into the matter of some essential spiritual superiority of a Jew over a non-Jew.
Factually, mixed people (and by the way, I see them as victims to some extent in this story) bring with them many problems for two reasons:
1. A tendency toward violent upbringing + isolation from society (in extreme cases even with a mild antisemitic flavor)
2. Not finding their place in general society because they aren’t Jews
I’ve met such people in different social circles, and almost all of them suffered from these two symptoms, and those two symptoms lead to very bad results indeed (and it’s a shame that whoever came up with the Law of Return didn’t think about the fact that mixed-background people with an anti-Jewish background and a violent culture could come to the country, and used the law in order to clash with Jewish law).
I’m not generalizing, but in that population there are more such cases relative to the general secular population (certainly regarding the soft antisemitism I mentioned, which exists among some of them).
And again, this is not a claim about the essence of the non-Jew versus the essence of the Jew.

Beit Hillel,
They’ll have a big problem because, to my surprise and yours, they see value in Judaism, and don’t perceive it like Swissness. See Rabbi Shach’s “rabbits speech” and the reactions to it. If so, let them define what a Jew is and how he differs from a Swiss person aside from language and mentality (= completely neutral facts).

Ziegel,
What defines him is his ethnic origin. He indeed isn’t Jewish in any essential sense, except for the halakhic-racist definition of a Jewish mother—that is, origin. His culture is entirely non-Jewish.

I thought, on the contrary, that the rabbits speech helps me. Judaism had degenerated for them into ordinary Swiss-style nationality plus folklore (ordinary Swiss folklore), and therefore Rabbi Shach’s words, which grounded Judaism in religion, aroused outrage. The connection between popular feeling (= being one people) and citizenship is not necessary (just as it does not exist in Switzerland), and only the Law of Return connects the two. Solutions can be found for the Law of Return (for example, that it would not apply to converts).

But however that may be, I’m not exactly sure what the gain is from your proposal to put the secular public in a position where they would have to define for themselves who is a Jew / Israeli. Is the idea to reduce the criticism they hurl at the religious people of Kliya-Brak? Or that in such a situation they would define for themselves that Judaism as a religion matters to them, and then draw closer to their Father in Heaven and ask for more kollel students to sit and learn? Maybe simply that they would become aware of their own desires?

That’s simply not true. It’s worth reading the comments there.. There is no doubt that people were outraged because they see Judaism as a value (“and no one has a monopoly,” etc.). Otherwise what’s the problem? He defines Judaism as a religion and they define it as a nationality, and one master said one thing and the other master said another, and there is no dispute.
All three answers are correct.

I’ll read the responses, and if you say so, then you’re probably right about that.
But I didn’t understand the difficulty. After all, you testified to us, saying that concepts have substance, etc. Judaism (= the Jewish people / nation) is definitely a concept worth arguing about, and they argue whether observance of commandments is an essential characteristic of that concept (in their opinion, it is not).

The question is what they propose as a definition of the substance of this concept. That is exactly my claim.

All right, actually that’s what you wrote—that Judaism is a value and no one has a monopoly. All that remains for me is to read the responses to the speech.

[If it were possible to edit, I would add “in their view” before “no one has a monopoly”]