At this point this is no longer separating religion (Judaism) from the state, but separating Jewishness as nationality from the state. Is the Rabbi against the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people? Is he against the Law of Return?

I have no problem with Judaism in some national sense. But you can’t base that on Orthodox conversion. And if no agreement can be reached, then yes—give up on the state’s Jewish character. And if people oppose that, let them bear the consequences and come to an agreement.

The content of the ruling is far from being agreed upon by everyone. It is true that there is no judicial activism here: the court had no legitimate way to avoid ruling, since there is a real lacuna in the law. But they certainly could have said (and in my opinion should now say) that the gap in the concept of “conversion” should be interpreted according to the status quo, until the Knesset decides to give it different content.

But really we have no one to blame but ourselves. For years there were right-wing coalitions and they never reached a solution, nor did they make sure the composition of the court represented the people. Now we’re eating what we cooked.

“It is true that there is no…” instead of “That there is no…”. By the way, the big problem is not marriage (that too is problematic, but solvable), but the back door that has now been created to Israeli citizenship for any taker.

If they see there’s a problem with Israeli citizenship for any taker, then they’ll make corrections (for example, Nadav Shenarav’s proposal that the Law of Return not apply to converts). Or they’ll decide that instead of acceptance of commandments and immersion in a mikveh, you have to run a marathon with a clementine tied above your head.

How can you base Jewishness on anything other than Orthodox conversion? You yourself have written a thousand times that the definition of the concept “Jew” passes only through Jewish law. What other definition could there be? A Jew is someone who eats kugel? If there is no agreement on the Jewishness of the state, then there is no reason to live together at all. Let’s split into two states. I would never serve in an army that is not the army of the Jewish people. Whoever wants to die for democracy—good for him. In my eyes he’s a fool. In any case, you only reinforce my feeling that I’m living under foreign rule. Now I’m even starting to justify the Haredim. This really was never their state.

Rabbi Michi, either you’re starting to lose your sanity or you’re on the way to becoming a traitor. Wishing you a full recovery.

Gabi,
Such a correction would amount to nullifying the ruling. After all, there is no legal significance to recognition of conversion other than the Law of Return and marriage. If it’s a purely religious act, nobody cares whether the state recognizes it or not.

Not equivalent to nullifying the ruling, because today Orthodox conversion has some special civil status that requires belief in all sorts of things and commitment to perform various religious acts. Such a conversion is of course a ridiculous and senseless ceremony, exactly like Reform conversion or running a marathon.
You argued that the main problem with Reform conversion—and therefore the main benefit of Orthodox conversion—is that it’s easy to get through. In other words, you’re saying the advantage of Orthodox conversion is that it’s hard to get through. I assume you only claimed that in order to defend your real opinion, namely that Orthodox conversion really effects something meaningful, but in any case I replied that one can think of obstacles more relevant than an arbitrary obstacle called Orthodox conversion.

Emanuel,
And in your nobility you’re willing to die for a group of gentiles who believe that the Torah is from heaven and keep commandments? Hanging Jewish nationality on some connection to contemporary Orthodoxy is laughable in the eyes of anyone who doesn’t think that amid thunder and lightning many years ago two stone tablets came down from heaven. Every cucumber threatens to stop watering the garden.

Gabi,

Of course I think Orthodox conversion effects something meaningful, but that has nothing to do with my opinion about the ruling. Putting on phylacteries also effects something in my eyes, and I have no interest in the state recognizing it, because such recognition neither adds nor subtracts anything.

The State of Israel, the state of the Jews, chose a path of granting citizenship according to religion. Indeed, that path is possible only if conversion is a meaningful barrier. If all the ruling amounted to was a declarative judgment that the State of Israel sees Reform Jews as Jews, without any effect on citizenship, I’d have no problem with it. As far as I’m concerned, the state can recognize the noble titles of Micronesia too.

For the technical barrier problem there are many solutions, none of which needs to be Orthodox conversion (which to me is an internal matter of commandment-observant people, like regulations about oil temperature at McDonald’s). You could require three years of volunteering in a Jewish community abroad, or extensive knowledge of Maccabean history. So if a problem arises and we see that “any taker” of an undesirable type is actually exploiting this route of entry, then we’ll add barriers or cancel entry by conversion. Right now Reform conversion works very well as an expression of a desire for a close connection to the Jewish nation.

Emanuel, an empty vessel makes the most noise.

I’m no longer willing to die for anyone. I thought that in this way I’d be fine and my soul would be at peace. But it turns out that’s not the case, and I’ll still be harmed even after I stop doing army service. Nothing will ever change if other people don’t rise up too. But if someone wants to be a sucker and a fool, who am I to stop him.

The question is whether your conception of conversion stems from your religiosity, or whether you think you have a reasonable argument to offer a secular person (pleased to meet you) as to why there is a principled difference between Orthodox and Reform conversion or whatever else.
The feeling of deep identification with a collection of commandment-observers regardless of their nationality, such that for that very reason so-and-so would want to establish a state with them and serve in its army (today the Haredim are complete parasites on military defense and the religious are half-parasites) is, in my eyes, a fantasy. Nationality is a strange feeling, but as an existing and familiar fact it somehow plucks the strings of broad family belonging and identity. A collection of commandment-observers seems to me completely arbitrary. Maybe tomorrow the cobblers’ guild will also decide it wants a state in which all the cobblers of the world unite, and in conversion they’ll test awl and shoe-last skills. The most talented cobbler will be appointed to the council and his mediocre sons will fill his place after him.

Gabi, I didn’t understand to whom your question is addressed. But clearly, from a secular perspective there is no difference between the conversions. But you’re talking about a national “conversion,” not a conversion that belongs to the religious sphere.

If it’s clear that from a secular perspective there is no difference between the conversions, then all is well. Emanuel here was talking about a Jewish state and an army, until I got the impression that he thinks his position is relevant also to those who in practice bore, and still bear, most of the burden of building and maintaining the Jewish state and its army and economy (a.k.a. secular people).

In addition, someone who is genuinely persuaded that the Jewish religion is true and therefore undergoes Orthodox conversion, from the standpoint of my intuition remains exactly as he was before. Someone who wants to join the nation and not only the religion—he and only he is a “convert” in my eyes. Of course, if because of religion he wants to be part of the nation and not only of the community of believers who perform commandments, that’s also fine. But it’s clear to me that this is only my personal opinion. National conversion is not a dichotomous matter done with the slash of a legal sword; rather, if there is a process of absorption into the nation, then the degree of belonging grows over time and settlement.

Here I disagree with you completely. In my eyes, national conversion has no meaning whatsoever. Think about someone who wants to join the Italians in the U.S. Does he need a procedure of “Italianization”? No. If he wants to speak Italian, read Italian, and marry an Italian woman—good for him. A procedure is required either for naturalization or for joining a religion. A nation is not something with a value dimension. On the national plane, whether you are a Jew or not is just a neutral fact. It has no value significance at all. And if someone wants to join the Jewish nation—good for him. And if he doesn’t—so much the better. Why is that important and why is it valuable? Joining a religion obligates one in different values, so it has a value dimension and requires a process of conversion. What happens with us is that there is a connection between religion and state, so secular people desperately search for a process parallel to religious conversion, instead of talking about naturalization as in any other country. And of course they don’t find such a process and never will. The reason is that there is no such thing as secular Judaism in any defined sense. The secular Jew is no different from the secular gentile except perhaps in his language and the literature he reads. Their values are similar. So what exactly would you require of the convert? That he speak the language? That’s naturalization, not conversion.

Regarding

I don’t have much to offer the secular person (except for what I’ll point to below). In principle he is like a child captured among the gentiles. That is, from his point of view the concept “Jew” is no different from the concept “German.” From a secular perspective nationality has no great value. It’s just like a big family. So on the one hand, after people experience betrayals even within their own small family, then not only do they attach no importance to the peoplehood, they don’t even attach importance to family. But if that’s so, and even family can’t be trusted, then who can be trusted? (Indeed it is written, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man,” and one can trust only in God. But I’m really talking about faith in human beings and not security in human beings—it’s not the same thing; there is a big difference.) That is: if you can’t believe in family members, then in whom can you? Family is basically the only basic human form of existence on which human society is built. The communes in the kibbutzim, where they tried to abolish the concept of family—children lived separately from their parents, and no woman belonged to any specific man either (not officially, of course, but I heard rumors that they would exchange women)—did not last.

But in the case of Jews there is something special:

A. Metaphysical (which you’ll call religious, but from a religious person’s perspective it is reality)—the Jewish people: whoever is defined as Jewish according to Jewish law (the Torah). We’re talking about people who entered into a covenant among themselves and with God regarding a certain form of existence that also includes mutual responsibility. And God is responsible for the sanctions when we fail to keep the terms of the covenant. Religiously speaking, the nationality of other peoples truly has little value and is built on cheap sentiment. As long as the human being is false, no family and no people will help defend him. Deciding that he is upright and joining with other people who also declared themselves such does not help. In order to be upright one needs fear of God. And that is not something one is born with; it has to be learned.

B. Historical observation: the Jewish people cannot be erased, and it won’t help individual members assimilate and flee from their Judaism. The gentiles will always see them as Jews and as not belonging to them and as a foreign body, no matter how much they disguise themselves as gentiles. We’ve seen this movie already in the emancipation, the rise of modern antisemitism, and the Holocaust. The whole story of Zionism is built on the insight (a secular one!) that the Jewish people need to live by themselves in their own state and care for and defend themselves by themselves, because no one else in the world will do it for them. And that “Jew” they spoke of—even without intending it—was the Jew according to Jewish law, not someone who eats kugel. I’m sure one could have convinced Hitler (if one had tried hard enough) that if the Jews don’t see you as Jewish then you aren’t Jewish—but maybe he wanted to be stricter in the laws of killing Jews and killed anyone who had even one-eighth Jewish blood from either side, but I’m convinced he would have agreed to the basic rule. In fact, he perceived the real Jew as the Haredi Jew. Assimilated Jews he saw as Haredi Jews in disguise (there are Nazi propaganda photographs about this in the museum at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot).

In my case, in any event, this is not about emotional identification with some group, but about an intellectual insight that I am bound in fate and destiny with those who received the Torah at Sinai, their descendants, and those who join them according to the laws of that covenant itself (which are divine laws).

And in any case, Reform conversion is nothing even according to the Reform themselves—for from their perspective all they do is rituals and culture, without real value. The Orthodox believe (whether rightly or not) that they effect things in reality. Therefore they are not of the same status. It’s like pseudoscientists coming and asking for funding for their pseudoscience on the basis of equal budgets for scientists. And the pseudoscientists admit that what they do has no scientific value, except that there isn’t really any such thing as science. Obviously in such a case it makes sense not to treat pseudoscientists equally (as someone objective from the outside). Maybe the scientists are wrong, but they claim to be making claims about reality—claims that either work or don’t. Some believe they work and some don’t, but their claims have real scientific value. But the pseudoscientists—even by their own lights—are just playing games. They are simply doing things with no scientific value even according to themselves. For them there is no science, only culture. So let them go to the Ministry of Culture and not the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In that sense even Muslims and Christians are better than they are (they believe in something, and therefore I respect them—I just think they are wrong). By the same token, the High Court could also recognize what I’d call “reddish conversion”—tomorrow I’ll open an office, and whoever comes to me and says “reddish” will be declared Jewish. Then I too will come to the High Court demanding that my conversions be recognized. I’m also a stream in Judaism and I demand recognition for my conversions. It’s completely ridiculous. At most, the High Court could have argued that “Jew” is not a legal concept and say that there is no such thing as a state of the Jews because that contradicts some sacred basic law of equality established by the gods of democracy, and that’s it. Let’s see it do that. And if secular people support this, what do I have to do with them?

So my main claims are not directed at you but at Rabbi Michi, who knows all this, yet because of his blind devotion to separating religion and state reaches paradoxes and loses his sanity. He contradicts things he himself writes: 1. A Jew is only through conversion according to Jewish law.

2. Supposedly he wants a state of the Jews (now he’s only willing to “allow” it. Really, many thanks to him). If he doesn’t, I have nothing to say to him. In that case he is pretending to be a friend.

And then suddenly he wants the decision of who is a Jew in the state not to be according to Jewish law (any other criterion, no matter how stupid and empty, is fine—but not according to Jewish law).

If we assume that conversion is valid in trans-local communities, then conversion can also be valid for traditional Israeli society (which is called secular). For atheist Ashkenazi society, secular conversion is indeed not valid, but most Russians do not belong to that society.

Continuing my previous comment:
The Rabbi assumes that the Russians are atheistic and therefore their acceptance of the commandments is a bluff. In my opinion reality is the opposite. The great majority of Russians believe in God and that He gave Israel the Torah in its traditional sense. In this they are no different from the wildest street thug. Russians also know they can remain gentiles and not obligate themselves in commandments, and that there is nothing preventing them from living in a civil partnership or marrying abroad. They can also go down to Canada and live there among gentiles. If they choose to convert, it is because they prefer to be Jews rather than gentiles. From their point of view it is better to be a Jew in Gehenna than a gentile in the Garden of Eden. They know they will commit transgressions and go to Gehenna, but from their perspective that is preferable. They do not deceive themselves into thinking they will be righteous and the like, but they also do not think there is no God and that the Torah is false. On the contrary: they are sure the Torah is true and they ask to be part of it.

Y.D., where did I assume that here? It’s true that as to the substance of the matter, in my estimation this really is the correct description of most immigrants from Russia, though of course not all of them.
Talking about characteristics of “the Russians” is almost meaningless.

“They know they will commit transgressions and go to Gehenna, but from their perspective that is preferable. They don’t deceive themselves into thinking they’ll be righteous and so on, but they also don’t think there is no God and that the Torah is false. On the contrary, they are sure the Torah is true and they seek to be part of it.”

Really? Most of the Russian population that turns to conversion, and according to your words probably also those who don’t, have such strong faith in Judaism that they delve that deeply into it? They “know” the Torah is true on such a level that they also know that if they convert and then don’t keep commandments they’ll go to Gehenna? (And what fool would force himself into Gehenna if he is so sure he’s headed there, instead of being satisfied with being one of the righteous among the nations who merits the Garden of Eden—if, according to you, “that is their belief”? Or maybe most of them are also devoted Kookists who think that being Jewish means being an ultra-spiritual and exalted human being who will bring redemption to all humanity, so they are willing to risk everything and even go to Gehenna in order to merit being Jews—but of course not to keep commandments. I’m baffled.) Maybe most of them are no different from the average traditional street thug, as you say. Only they, and that same thug, don’t really delve into matters of faith—certainly not unpleasant matters like reward and punishment or Gehenna. Rather, they perceive God and Judaism as some kind of folk-traditional religion with nice customs and prayers. And along the way the more dominant consideration is probably simply to stay in the convenient place where they already have family, friends, and for some of them even a respectable profession, and to assimilate by accepting the local religion of the majority. (For those among them who have that. Others who fail to acclimate do indeed consider emigration.) Another point: emigrating, finding an Israeli partner, or living as an atheist minority—for those among them who are atheists—is not so easy. Yes, even if there are absorption baskets and civil benefits.

Of course that doesn’t mean that such a conversion to a folk-traditional religion is not valid. If it does contain belief in an acceptance in principle of obligation, there are positions according to which it is valid. And that doesn’t mean they are true righteous converts who really delved deeply and really want seriously to keep commandments (whether at the level of Torah scholars or at the level of common folk). But it’s worth being precise about the facts.

From the thug*

And that’s another point*

Mikyab,
You disagree with me completely, but I agree almost completely with what you said—indeed, national conversion has no significance as a legal procedure and it also isn’t a “value” matter. But national conversion does have social significance and is not identical with naturalization; naturalization is a result of belonging to the nation, and that belonging is indeed a gradual matter, like Italianization. And indeed I think there should be no legal status for converts. And not because of technical problems that too many undesirable people would get in, but really because that ceremony, as a one-time ceremony, Orthodox or Reform, doesn’t say much except a personal declaration of intent. Let that convert kindly marry a Jewish woman and live among Jews, and then his belonging will keep getting stronger.
The reason Orthodox converts are accepted by secular people is because of the Reform/national component in the matter, namely the general desire to connect to the Jewish nation, and not because of its religious component. So now they distill out of Orthodox conversion what is meaningful in their eyes. At present Reform conversion really does indicate a desire to belong; if that changes, we’ll change the law too.

Emanuel,
It seems we’ve sailed here into many issues. On the matter of metaphysics we’ll remain in disagreement. I relate to the Jewish nation the way I relate to the Italian nation, and what is good for the Italians is good for me too. As for the historical observation, I don’t understand what’s relevant about it—who was talking about erasing the Jewish nation?! A nation can absorb a certain percentage of attachments and remain the same group. Obviously, if tomorrow fifty million people want to become Jews, then that isn’t joining the Jewish nation but swallowing it.
I’ll just remind you again that you seem on the one hand to base yourself throughout on a religious conception, and on the other hand to make claims about the national matter of the State of Israel and its army. That national matter has nothing to do with religion except that it is the cultural folklore of our ancestors and is also carried by parts of the population that took and take part (not sufficiently) in this national enterprise. When one sees that opposition to Reform conversion comes mainly from religious circles, one can understand exactly that the claims stem from a religious root and not from the national conception. The problem is that this religious root is not supposed to interest secular people (and from my impression, in my circles: it doesn’t interest them). And of course it is supposed to interest religious people (and indeed it interests them very much). If we agree on that, excellent.

Regarding

When I talk about erasing the Jewish nation, I’m speaking more about a worldview and identifying processes than about a specific case of a few attachments. My main problem is with this diasporic attempt of the spiritual left to assimilate once again into the gentiles, only this time within the state of the Jewish people itself. To return to exile again, only inside the land itself, as though nothing had been learned from history. It’s an attempt to assimilate into the gentiles again, only at the state level rather than the personal level. Those who did not understand that Jews have nothing to look for among the gentiles ended up in the gas chambers. I’m not interested in a second round. This mentality itself is what will kill us. A kind of reflex that secular people have, to say the opposite of whatever the religious say. I myself am very liberal on matters of religion and state except on this issue (not so much in practice, but in principle yes. I am also liberal in principle on prostitution and drugs, only in practice, in light of experience, I oppose them too). It’s a matter of common sense and learning from experience. One has to learn from history that the Jewish mentality failed. The Haredim still haven’t escaped from it either (they really love exile). We are different from every other people in our history and also in the circumstances that caused the establishment of our state. What worked for other peoples will not work for us. There are several things on which life here in the land is built—honesty and justice, and the second thing is mutual responsibility among Jews, and only Jews according to Jewish law. Don’t forget that in principle Mapai agreed to this. They only allowed Israeli citizenship also for non-Jews who came through marriage or family connection with halakhic Jews. What is happening today is something else—it’s an attempt to abolish nationality and turn into empty universality in the name of postmodernism and democracy and progressivism and sacred equality, which is the same exploitative, disloyal Jewish mentality of trying to secure quiet existence among the nations without having to commit to someone or something that would force them out of their small private lives. It is simply anti-Zionism in disguise.

You’ve gone far. All I presented here was a normal position of nationality and citizenship. At the national level we are no different from any other people; today anyone who doesn’t recognize the Jewish nation in particular is a delusional antisemite. If you’re interested in the covenant of destiny of believers in the Jewish religion (or the covenant of destiny of those who swore the physicians’ oath), good health to you.
Why you connect all these ideas (the Jews are different from every other people, mutual responsibility among Jews “according to Jewish law”) specifically to the state here, which as far as I remember arose without this background of speculation—I don’t understand. And you still claim to be the great nationalist while distinguishing between a convert who keeps commandments (enters the nation like a king) and a convert who doesn’t keep commandments (doesn’t enter the nation—who is he anyway), truly a model of a sensible national conception.

Reflexes of secular people… anti-Zionism… you made me laugh. Zionism (= a nation-state for the Jewish people) needs religion about as much as someone eating an avocado needs its inedible pit. In the past religion preserved the nation from assimilation and kept it cohesive around itself, but once there is already a stable and independent nation, then for this purpose religion is a needless burden. From the national standpoint, the religious have for a hundred years already hindered more than helped, in every field, and you still preach morality. Pathetic, in my opinion.

Conversion according to Jewish law contains the substantial national conversion (a strong and convincing decision of desire to attach oneself to the nation) plus irrelevant peacock feathers (belief in the giving of the Torah and commitment to keep commandments), and therefore Mapai had no problem with it. On the other hand, precisely because of the disconnection from Jewish law, there should be no difference in the Law of Return between a Jewish mother and a Jewish father, because that artificial distinction is indeed an internal halakhic matter (without any logic in my opinion, by the way), and indeed no secular party ever dreamed of such a distinction. That is exactly the difference between a national conception (ordinary, reasonable, understandable human) and a religious conception (divine, strange, arbitrary, and pointless).

As for your calling the Torah pointless, arbitrary, and strange—you speak from ignorance. I don’t blame you. To understand the internal logic of the Torah—don’t forget that this is God’s logic; He did not give it so that every single detail would meet our approval—one has to be a Torah scholar. That is what distinguishes a Torah scholar from an ignoramus (who can be someone who studied and reviewed but did not apprentice with Torah scholars). In any case, the national conception of the Jewish people really is different from that of other peoples (Saadia Gaon wrote: “Our nation is a nation only by virtue of its Torahs.” The reason a secular person is considered Jewish is because he too is obligated in the commandments.) In any event, why it is like this (why there should be such a different people) is not the place to discuss.

As for the connection between Zionism and religion, that is actually a process one can see with one’s own eyes. But I refer you to Rabbi Michi’s book Two Wagons. He will explain there the connection between nationality and religion (syntheticity), that is, why secularity ultimately leads to empty universality and particularity. I don’t know how old you are (sixty maybe?), but you can see that the army is becoming more and more populated by religious people. Secular people of the Mapai and Mapam type—communists who hate religion (today equality warriors who hate religion)—and not traditionalists and right-wingers, are an increasingly endangered species among combat soldiers. That was already the case when I was in the army, and I assume the trend has only strengthened since. Today’s young left-wing secular people don’t believe in the very concept of nationhood. For them it represents racism (which is the gravest sin, worse than the three cardinal sins). Look how many ridiculous wars there are just over a law that merely states the obvious (it has almost no force beyond the declaration). Heaven forbid we say the obvious. It is clear that because of this declaration alone, all negotiations with the Palestinians are stuck, because they are precisely unwilling to recognize this. How can I complain about them if the left also doesn’t recognize it? You represent an endangered species. That is the anti-Zionism I’m talking about. In any case, the disintegration of nationality is at present a worldwide process in the West (until the next reactions and uprisings that will come from ordinary people against exploitative immigrants, and then they’ll blame the Jews for it—quite justifiably, since Jews are at the top of left-wing parties all over the world). But there is no people in the world more than the Jews that doesn’t want to be a people. It’s like the Religious Zionist sector that doesn’t want to be a sector, and somehow everyone else sees it as one and nothing can help.

By the way, I’m not preaching morality either. I’m claiming that all this behavior of the High Court and its satellites is stupid and illogical.

Emanuel, a question:
Why do you think Hitler would have been convinced if they had explained to him that someone who is not Jewish according to the Jews, as you put it—that is, according to Jewish law—but does have Jewish roots, need not be murdered?
Are you aware that Hitler wasn’t really interested in Jewish law? I’m also pretty sure he knew that sons and grandsons of a Jewish father are not Jewish according to Jewish law, and he murdered some of them anyway. Indeed there were those who had Jewish roots only on one side (both those with Jewish roots only on the mother’s side and only on the father’s side—again, Jewish law didn’t really interest him) who got from him a personal exemption from the race laws (certainly grandchildren in occupied areas weren’t checked with such precision), because he was convinced that the Jewish contamination had somehow skipped them. And those were usually people willing to identify strongly with Nazi ideology and who looked to him very Aryan, blond, and German. I’m interested in understanding why you think the whole world speaks the very same inner language you speak and acts according to the same axioms you act by. I’m using this question only as an example.

Clarification: I am not one of those who think one should convert or even grant citizenship just because of the definition in the Nuremberg Laws.

To Rational,

I wrote there in the comment: “In fact, he perceived the real Jew as the Haredi Jew. Assimilated Jews he saw as Haredi Jews in disguise (there are Nazi propaganda photographs about this in the museum at Kibbutz Lohamei HaGeta’ot).” There are propaganda pictures there of an assimilated German Jew without beard and sidelocks, and next to him a “picture” of what he looks like with beard and sidelocks. That is, he perceived the Jews specifically as Haredim. Presumably that would follow the way the Haredim see themselves. Otherwise why all those pictures? Blood connection alone is enough. He saw the evil specifically in Haredi Jewishness.

Emanuel,

1. Given that the Jewish religion is passed through the mother and not the father as well, unlike every nation in the world that doesn’t bother defining exactly how nationality is passed on and certainly doesn’t distinguish between mother and father—I said that this is strange and arbitrary, you answered that I speak from ignorance and then to the blast of a shofar you fled the field. If you decide to come back, I’m here.

2. I’m happy to update you that all over the world there are nations and nation-states and this division does not overlap with the religious division. There are several nations with the same religion, several religions within the same nation, states that continue functioning nicely despite a high degree of secularity, and even without religion at all in the Western sense. Everything exists and everything is fine. I myself do not attribute excessive importance to nationality; it’s a nice sense of belonging and as an individual it has some weight, but it absolutely won’t stop me from marrying an “Italian gentile,” Russian, or Brazilian if it suits me. I’m almost 27, by the way. A nation has no surplus rights over other nations (just as I have no surplus rights over others), and nothing will happen if this nation changes a little as a result of absorbing 10% outsiders. And Christians can also be Jews in the national sense perfectly well, just as there are religious Jews and Muslim Italians, so too there can be Christian Jews.

3. As for the claim that the army is populated by religious people: even today many of the religious serve in the outrageous hesder track. In addition, they pursue fewer advanced degrees in the exact sciences, open fewer private businesses, and initiate fewer successful technology companies. And even today, in the places where the decisive strategic advantage of the IDF lies—the air force, intelligence corps, and special units—you will find an overwhelming majority of secular people. And I haven’t even spoken about the disgraceful conduct of the Haredim, which truly is beyond criticism. In short, when you check, you discover that just as in all the past hundred years, those who are still pushing this people forward and to no small extent carrying the others on their backs are the secular—also in the army, also in science, also in the economy—while being forced to hear the musings of the religious and put up with their craziness at every step. That’s what I saw in the statistics and that’s also my personal impression, but I can’t guarantee the correctness of this matter. I’m not a sociologist or historian but work in other fields. In any case—and forgive me if I take the gloves off a bit—it’s not the first time I’ve encountered this puffed-up pretension among religious people, as if someone was waiting for them to come with some message and they will “save the people from itself.” To them I say: no one is waiting for your messages; on all the relevant tests you actually provide a problematic example; and it is advisable that you finally free yourselves from this ridiculous delusion of grandeur. Say thank you and keep quiet (three words that slip out of me in an animal, not very democratic instinct, and I don’t stand behind them, but still, let it be).

2. All that is very nice, but I am not interested in fighting for someone with whom I share no common fate. If you have no common fate with me, then what do you want from me? I will unite with those with whom I do share it, that’s all. I will fight for myself and for my family. If you think you’ll be welcomed among the rest of humanity, then good health to you—but what do you want from me? A Christian Jew really does already sound like a good joke. The fact that you don’t see that says something about you.

3. I don’t know where you got your information about education in the religious public. Sorry, but my experience in academia has been very different from yours. It seems that the percentage of religious people in the natural sciences is actually greater than their percentage in the population. But I won’t argue about it, because who cares anyway. After all, if for you nationality is a nice but insignificant thing, then our army isn’t the people’s army but just some fighting organization, so who cares how many religious people are there. In any case it doesn’t represent them. (And it seems to me there is indeed unjustified discrimination in appointing senior officers. But again, who cares.) All those secular people who go to the places you mentioned do it so they can later go into high-tech or get girls, not out of concern for the people as a whole. If the religious stopped being suckers they would leave the army and let those with the “qualitative advantage” do guard duty. But that has nothing to do with me and I don’t care about them. Left-wing secular people are not part of me and do not represent me. And in that sense I’m with the Haredim. This is not my state and its army is not my army. And just as Arabs are exempt from the army because it’s not their army, so too the Haredim and at least I deserve an exemption from the army. I personally don’t need special budgets. And I also claim that for the other religious who don’t know this—right now this is not their state and not their army. In any case, know that from my perspective there is no honor at all in being prime minister or in any other senior role here, and I have no aspiration for it. It’s like being king of the dwarfs.

Rabbi,
In this topic I didn’t need you to write it explicitly in order to know that this is what you think.

Rational (relatively),
The opposite, Guta. The thugs are the biggest believers in Gehenna and the like. with them there’s no abstraction at all. For transgressions you get Gehenna literally. They also don’t deny that they are sinners. They know they are wicked, but from their perspective that’s just how it is.

Regarding

By the way, regarding the attribution of Jewishness through the mother: there are things in Jewish law whose attribution goes by the father. For example, tribal affiliation—Judah, Benjamin, Levi. Priesthood too passes through the father. Also in ancestral customs one follows the father. That is, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Yemenite, etc.

Additionally, according to Jewish law the identity of other nations is determined by the father: regarding the prohibition on an Ammonite or Moabite entering the congregation, an Ammonite and Moabite are considered such if their father is Ammonite or Moabite; and similarly regarding the prohibition against abhorring an Egyptian or Edomite after three generations.

Additionally, there is something halakhically complicated called “a convert from the seed of Israel,” meaning someone born to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother who converted. He has a special status that creates halakhic ramifications that are disputed. In short, the transmission of identity from father to son was something before the eyes of the Giver of the Torah, which of course shows that the matter of Jewish identity being determined by the mother may not be understood, but is certainly not arbitrary; rather it was determined intentionally and with thought.

You keep adding lots of details. Complexity is not always depth; sometimes it’s just arbitrary mess or the result of historical constraints and ancient, irrelevant social structures. First of all, the very idea of a dichotomous legal determination of who belongs to a nation or tribe is entirely foreign to me. Another thing: if you’re going to determine it, it would be good to have some sort of (up-to-date) logic as to why by the mother or by the father or by one of them or by both together. Until such an organizing logic is proposed, every addition of details is only a problem.

My impression is that you too have no explanation to offer, so I don’t understand why you keep returning to this topic. The truth is that from my experience—which isn’t all that extensive, to be honest, but I’ve asked a few times about similar issues (among smart religious people whom I generally professionally respect!)—I don’t have many expectations either. Either they tell me “that’s what God wanted, period,” or they start inventing metaphysical inventions that God knows where they came from. For what is logical, religion isn’t needed, and therefore all that remains unique to religion are only the weird parts.

The mystery that sometimes bothers me is how religious/Haredi people think they have something to sell even to someone who does not believe that the Ten Commandments came down from heaven. Internal achievements in the field of religion—sure, those certainly exist. I have no doubt that if we measure Torah study and Sabbath observance, then religious people reach tremendous achievements that no secular person will attain. The point is that I don’t measure that thing and it doesn’t interest me, and the important point is that it’s not only that which they try to sell.
They sit in the stands with their hands in their pockets, handing out advice and preaching sermons.
Have they reached such impressive achievements that it would make sense to think that “these people know what they’re talking about,” and therefore it’s worth listening to them even if one doesn’t understand? Absolutely not.
Do they have orderly, logical explanations to offer even to someone who wasn’t convinced by the business about the Ten Commandments from heaven? Time and again I discover that they do not.
I’m sick of it. Let everyone use his democratic finger however he likes, and I won’t complain about that. But when those losers (sorry) speak with pathos as though they know what is right even outside the synagogue, without there being any backing for anything they say—that’s no longer merely laughable, ridiculous, foolish, astonishing, and charlatanry; it’s also annoying.

It is not my sociological role to defend or explain or market what other people believe. I am responsible first and foremost for my own words. I am truly not trying to sell you on the giving of the Torah, and I also don’t think it can be done. (Rabbi Michi tried to make a plausible—though not conclusive—case on the subject in his fourth booklet, which I didn’t bother reading in full, though I still doubt it would have caused me in the first place to keep commandments. It could only prevent me from ceasing to keep them because of the claim that the giving of the Torah could not have happened.) It’s a matter of trust in people, which you do not have (partly justifiably). I have trust in the Torah from my many years of experience, and I became convinced that there is esoteric logic in it. So I really have no interest in persuading you of that. I can only explain details (but not justify them). If I were on the level of Moses our teacher, then I could. But if I were Moses our teacher, you would need to chase after me, and even then I would reveal things to you only little by little.

As for the idleness of religious people, that is actually a classic Jewish trait—a wise and idle people. In fact, wisdom causes idleness (because of the recognition of many futile aspects of human existence). But we won’t get into that now. I’m sorry to tell you, but from my many years of experience the secular public (including the Ashkenazi one) is no less foolish and stupid than the average religious person, and even more so. And no less loser-like in that sense. The secular public isn’t really more of a winner; it is simply more wild (more lacking in boundaries and therefore also less tense). And that too has advantages. It’s always the old dispute between the smart nerd and the stupid bully. Not that it’s completely similar here. In any event, a bully is not a “winner.” He’s simply an animal. And in fact there is no such thing as secular people either. They too are religious. They believe in other religions (communism, democracy, etc.) that are even more foolish, and even more fanatically, because they cause them to ignore common sense when it deviates from the principles of that non-divine religion. And that’s why religious people feel they are smarter than secular people and give them explanations about the outside world. I agree that this is annoying, but that doesn’t mean what they say is correct. If you really compare the greatest figures of Israel to the greatest figures in the secular public historically, the latter don’t reach the ankles of the former. It isn’t a matter of intelligence or scientific achievement (which certainly are not insignificant and have great value). It’s a matter of greatness as a human being. Albert Einstein did not come close to the ankles of the Vilna Gaon or Rabbi Kook. And I greatly value him and his scientific enterprise (general relativity, his contributions to quantum mechanics, and above all his contributions to physical thought. He truly was a philosopher of nature). But he did not have fear of Heaven or fear of God (which is not religious piety, which indeed characterizes loser-ness), and that is something that is learned and is connected with Kabbalah, about which more in the next paragraph.

In any case, from my perspective when I approach speaking with a secular person, I have no goal at all of convincing him that the Torah is true. The Torah was given for a certain purpose, and that purpose is what matters: the purpose and meaning of existence. And that is what I speak about. The purpose and meaning of existence are tightly connected with Kabbalah, and it is the first story upon which the Torah given at Sinai exists as a second story; and right now, in my eyes, the importance of the second story is secondary (a person who has no first story but only the second has a second story floating in the air). Kabbalah I would come to sell you—but this is not the place for it.

In addition, part of Torah study is indeed to understand the logic behind the details. This collection of details is a collection of natural phenomena that we, as students of Torah, are supposed to find the set of laws that generate them. That itself is part of the commandment of Torah study. That is simply how the Holy One, blessed be He, intended it to be. It is simply ignorance on your part to think that the Holy One, blessed be He, will explain the logic to you and only then you will graciously agree to keep His commandments. In such a case the whole meaning of faith vanishes. Then you have not kept His commandment but your own commandments.

1. You wrote, “I can only explain details (but not justify).” What is the difference between an explanation and a justification? And what do you think, as a start, about offering an “explanation” for the many details you wrote regarding national and tribal descent?

2. In complete contrast to what you say about idleness and loser-ness, the secular group in this country has receipts: it established a state, absorbed immigration, fused exiles, built an economy (in some of these things religious people certainly were partners too, but the vision, the engine, and most of the drivers were mainly secular). Therefore the pretension of certain religious people to think that without their advice everything here will collapse is simply disconnected from reality. They hold the supreme truth of how to defend the borders, how to defend the folk character, how to defend human happiness and families—everything they will teach these blind secular people (who meanwhile did everything here and generally succeeded while ignoring the buzzing of the religious). Simply pathetic.

I did not say a word about religious people who say, “We believe that this is what God said, and therefore we will try with all our strength to advance it.” I have a bitter dispute with them, but at least it is clear where each person stands and what the dispute is about (whether the Jewish religion is true). What I did argue against are religious/Haredi people, like you for example, who make general arguments about what is “right” for the people and the state and the world, when in the end there is no backing for it without the envelope of religion.
If the root of the argument is religious, then what is the point of presenting it to a person who drives on the Sabbath? They (and you among them) definitely do present it, and this out of an attempt to mislead (others, or maybe themselves too? I don’t know) into thinking that their argument is worth something even if the religion is not true. People who pretend and roll their eyes as though “this particular argument” is reasonable and persuasive even to someone who doesn’t believe in religion: “Reform conversion harms the nation,” “homosexuals harm the institution of the family,” “Sabbath in the state is a social matter,” you name it.
The arguments are always unconvincing (and as I noted, also sneaky, because their conservative root is religious), and the thought that conservative religious people are the responsible adults who know ‘what needs to be done’ has never been proven (if anything, the opposite). Just empty posing with no backing whatsoever. Nothing. Like opening a Kinder egg and discovering there’s no toy inside. And sending me to read ancient writings subject to a thousand interpretations when I have no reason to believe that in the end it will turn out there’s really something there—that is usually the behavior of charlatans. (It may be that in your case you are the one in a thousand who has ancient writings and is not a charlatan, but I have no way to tell.)

I direct all this to you directly, though I wouldn’t do that if I thought you were exceptional. You are a fairly clear archetype of the phenomenon I described, and therefore I don’t expect you to defend the opinions of others but your own positions.

3. Please explain what is meant by “greatness as a human being.” If on some metric “Rabbi Kook” comes out higher than Einstein (whose teaching I don’t know, but I do know how to appreciate scientific achievements. I work in mathematics), then there is something wrong with the metric. I hope your metric does not check whose teeth were whiter.
By the way, when you say “Rabbi Kook,” do you mean the one who sent people to settle the hills out of a primarily religious conception that “the land is ours”? Are you serious? He was a complete zero. At least if he had done it from a pragmatic stance of what benefits everyone, I wouldn’t be so irritated (though I think he caused enormous damage). But when it is clear to me that his motivation was deeply influenced by religion, and that he, together with his public, tried (and succeeded) to “create facts on the ground” for the rest of the population on the basis of his religious opinions, knowing that they were not accepted by others—that in my opinion is brazenness and vileness of the first order. And that too is an example of the damage wrought by religious arrogance.
I don’t know who the Vilna Gaon is, what he said, or what he did. Wikipedia says he studied a lot of Torah and was proficient in the sciences. Okay, so what?

1. By “explanation” I meant elaboration and expansion (that’s a kind of explanation, but let’s not expand right now). It’s a stage on the way to a justification.

2.3. Fine. I think I’m already exhausted. I wrote a lot and I don’t have the energy to write more. I have a feeling that maybe you’re delivering speeches to yourself. First of all, I was talking about Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. And the one who has a problem with the metric is you. Because there is also what is called “the sciences of divinity” (that is Rabbi Kook’s “field”—it is a bit more than just a scientific field), and you have no grasp of them whatsoever. In addition, if you write about Rabbi Zvi Yehuda that he is “a complete zero,” then you have gaps to fill in. By the way, I too have an academic background in physics and mathematics, so I do have the ability to evaluate intellectual enterprises one against another. The other side you have no ability to evaluate at all. In any case, as I wrote, I have no interest in persuading you. My arguments were against Rabbi Michi, and somehow you got mixed in here. As far as I’m concerned, accept the claim that if you want my vote in a coalition with you, I have a demand for a criterion of Jewishness based exclusively on Jewish law, and that’s it. That’s the language you understand.

And in addition, if someone feels he is the responsible adult, he is allowed to. It is not a sin. They are part of the state, and it doesn’t matter at all who founded it. Whatever happens to it now will also happen to them, and therefore they are allowed to participate in determining its fate. Quite apart from that, those secular people who founded the state are an extinct species, and there is no connection between them and those of today. Today’s secular people are more busy destroying it (at least as the state of the Jews. So in any event the religious have more work to do here). And as for claims and thought—you don’t get to decide what people are allowed to argue. Someone is allowed to claim what is right for the world on the basis of religion. No one asks your permission in order to make arguments. If you get angry, that is your choice alone. Your anger is part of the foolishness I am talking about (a fool is emotional—thinking from the gut).

Instead of occupying yourself with persuading yourself of your own righteousness (which is evidently not productive for you), I suggest that you take my words to heart and continue to reflect on them (even if they don’t seem correct to you; if you discover the mistake in them, you will benefit).

By the way, I don’t understand what claims you are talking about when you write: “I did argue against religious/Haredi people, like you for example, who make general arguments about what is ‘right’ for the people and the state and the world, when in the end there is no backing for it without the envelope of religion,” or “People who pretend and roll their eyes as though ‘this particular argument’ is reasonable and persuasive even to someone who doesn’t believe in religion: ‘Reform conversion harms the nation,’ ‘homosexuals harm the institution of the family,’ ‘Sabbath in the state is a social matter’”

Where exactly did I make such arguments? Aside from the Sabbath issue, where I agree with you, there is such a thing as conservatism, which is separate from religiosity, only they usually come together (though not necessarily—there is a conservative who is not religious, and there is also a liberal religious person, like Rabbi Michi). Besides, someone who is religious cannot really separate his religion from reality. It is reality from his perspective (he thinks the religion is true and that one is punished for not observing it).

So like this: among most religious people, conservatism precedes religiosity. Therefore “homosexuals harm the family” is a legitimate claim that you too can understand. I really think the conservative aspect here disturbs more than the religious one.

Reform conversion does harm the nation. Indeed this is the one place where religious reality and physical reality converge. Even as a secular person (a conservative secular person), I would accept a criterion for Jewishness only according to Jewish law (and as a secular person—Judaism according to tradition). There’s no helping it: the history of the Jewish people is tightly intertwined with this tradition. Any other claim sounds ridiculous to me. Historically it is clear to me that the Jews are different from other peoples, even if it isn’t clear why or how. And it is clear to me that this difference is connected with its tradition. But as I said, my claims were directed at Rabbi Michi, who is religious, and not at you.

In any case, I also don’t like the phenomenon of people disguising their real positions in the wrapping of other arguments and trying through them to achieve their real aim. That is a kind of dishonesty. Only in matters of conversion I think there truly is a failure of thought in the secular Zionist public. And when I make the conversion argument to them, I mean by it to point out a kind of contradiction between their secularity and their Zionism. What can I do? While one can speak of a German nation apart from their religion, it is impossible to do that regarding Jews. Because for thousands of years Judaism was both a nation and a religion. The secular can found a new nation, but they cannot call it “Jewish” (and in fact not even “Israeli”). That nation could really be not based on religion. But when speaking of the Jewish nation of 3,000 years and more, that nation is defined by the definitions of religion (because that was its reality until 130 years ago). But the nation that gathered here in the land (the Zionist enterprise) was created through persecutions, and those persecutions were, broadly speaking, of Jews according to Jewish law. I’m quite convinced that if there had been somewhere in the world some community of non-Jews all of whom had a Jewish father, it would not have been persecuted and pogromed. That is an observation about reality itself. But really this whole discussion is unnecessary, because from the standpoint of secular people today nationality is a bad thing, so what definition are we even arguing about?

You argued that Reform conversion harms the nation (as opposed to Orthodox conversion), while saying that the nation is defined by religion. I added the Sabbath and homosexual issues from other (failed) discussions. And about that I said two things. First, that this is an argument masquerading as a “general” argument that can be exported outward, but in practice stems only from religious roots. Second, that the pretension of religious people to try to save secular people from themselves is ridiculous when you check who actually did and succeeded and who buzzed in the background and didn’t do much. So you say that secular people have changed and that suddenly now today they do need rescue by the religious. Allow me to inform you that that is not correct. The cucumbers jump and the garden grows. You answered me “in my language” that if I want your vote in a coalition then you have demands. Fair enough, excellent and legitimate. Only let it be clear that this is a game of arm-twisting and there is no argument here that can be exported outward.

I really do not think the Jewish nation is essentially different from other nations (it differs only the way I differ from you while we are both human beings). That thought of yours is itself purely religious, and you yourself here and now are trying to market it to secular person(s). And I truly think and still cannot understand from where this horrifying idea sprang. In the past the Jewish nation was characterized by a certain religion, and today less so. In my opinion that is not essential at all (and as I said, Catholics too can join the Jewish nation, even if in a gradual process, and we’ll get Christian Jews to the glory of the people of Israel). And what do the pogroms have to do with the matter? I also didn’t understand that. When in Muslim Turkey there was a massive secularization process, did a new nation suddenly arise there? Were you appointed chairman of the Academy of the Hebrew Language when you speak to me about the use of the word “Jew”? Or by the way you use the word are you trying to make “essential” claims?

When I see that conservatism goes together with religiosity, and religiosity is after all only belief in a certain historical event, so that there is no essential connection between it and conservatism, then I conclude that conservatism is probably an envelope meant to protect religion. Why does the “harm to the family” that homosexuals allegedly cause matter by orders of magnitude more to religious people than to secular people? My feeling is that the religion is the hidden underlying cause.

Gabi,

The moment you wrote that one can attach to the Jewish nation people who would be “Christian Jews,” I think you pointed to the paradox that Michi is trying (or rather tried in his series of columns on the topic in the past) to formulate. And Emanuel too (whom I often find hard to understand, but on this matter I agree with what he says—at least if I understood him correctly). The ethnic group / people / nation or club (it doesn’t matter what you call it; those concepts simply didn’t exist back then) was defined in one of two ways: either a person born as a Jew, according to Jewish law, because all the Jewish communities lived according to Jewish law; or a person who came from outside and upon joining the Jewish community accepted the set of commandments and beliefs of the Jews. Reform, Conservative, and secular-atheists (or agnostics or deists)—all of you in your own ways want to change the rules of entry into the club. That is, to borrow the name “Jew” and assign it a new essence and new conditions of entry. I won’t get into the story of the Reform and Conservative definitions of Jews. They at least have consistency and a clear definition of who is a Jew in their view (at least the Conservatives do; the Reform, true to form, give vague definitions of things, but at least try to begin defining). But you, as a secular Jewish Israeli atheist, are trying to give a paradoxical and utterly illogical definition of “Jew”—as someone who is basically Israeli, contributes to state security, and wants to marry a Jewish woman and live in the majority society (?). The secular Jew. And in fact you don’t even care if he believes in Christianity and is Christian in his religion. From your perspective, if he contributes to the state and marries a Jewish-Israeli woman, then he is Jewish. You have created here a completely unacceptable definition of who is a Jew. And without noticing, you’re not really talking about belonging to Judaism or to the Jews at all, but about belonging to the State of Israel and being a good Israeli. What, in your view, connects you as a secular atheist Jew to a Jewish “American” who does not live in Israel and feels good in America (whether he belongs to American Haredim, who are simply interested in preserving religious life and see no value in establishing the state, or whether he belongs to American Reform, who see the United States as their home and people and Judaism as only a non-binding universal religion, or to Conservative or Modern Orthodox Americans, who often maintain a double identity and do not attribute supreme exclusive value to the state as you do)? You do not have much in common. But if you do not have much in common, and what connects you is only the Jewish mother you both have, then what will connect them to that gentile who comes from outside and, from your perspective, once he is an Israeli citizen he is no less Jewish than they are? Nothing. That gentile atheist (or even Christian or Muslim, from your point of view) is a good Israeli and that is enough for you (from your point of view that is of course your right). But there is nothing that connects him with Jewish history. Pindrus, I, Michi, and Emanuel, for example, do not accept him as a member of the club, and we hold only common citizenship, whose meaning is simply a mutual interest that the state not be destroyed. We have no shared values, no shared culture, nothing! He and American Orthodox Jews like Ben Shapiro and Yaakov Lerman have nothing in common—not even living in the same state and sharing an interest that it not be destroyed. Therefore to define a Jew as a person who wants to marry a Jewish woman and contributes to the security of the state is simply an unacceptable definition, and frankly a pretty stupid one. In fact, from an atheist or non-Orthodox point of view (except perhaps for especially conservative Conservatives), there really is nothing that holds all Jews of all shades of belief and opinion together in one group. So why call a process of assimilation into secular-Israeli society “conversion”? Why not simply call it “naturalization” or “assimilation”? Apparently here too lies the root of your problem and that of your likes. In fact there is not today even a strong secular Israeli identity completely detached from Jewish religion—both because most of the public, in my humble opinion, is not where you are, and because of the simple fact that there is no real value or content in such Israeliness, which has no and cannot have any positive value, originality, or specific cultural innovation, except the need to defend the Jews here so they won’t again be persecuted by Nazis, and to preserve grandmother-style customs of sufganiyot and candles on Hanukkah. And any gentile atheist, Buddhist, Muslim, or Christian can join being this kind of good Israeli who serves in the army and pays taxes for this purpose—only one should not call this thing conversion or becoming Jewish, and one should not define that gentile as Jewish, because there is nothing Jewish in him, and he has no connection to the historical meaning of the word “Jew.” Call him a good Israeli, and that’s all. As for the impatience shown toward gentiles, including gentiles who are good Israelis, in Jewish society—both the Haredi-religious and also the secular-traditional spectrum—I would be the first to protest strongly. But there is no need to change and invent concepts for that.

Precisely as a dyed-in-the-wool secular person, I have no interest, apparently like Gabi, in seeing myself as an authentic Jew. In my eyes authentic Judaism is mainly the Orthodox one, and precisely for that reason my interest is to distance Judaism (Orthodox Judaism) to a large extent from the state. The core of authentic Judaism, the Torah, is especially a negative thing (though not only, of course).
Therefore even if it is true that secular Zionism is to a large extent a distortion of the original Jewish heritage, I welcome that. The product standing before our eyes (Israel) is sufficiently worthy in this respect, and certainly one should not burden it with the pretension of “replacing” the Jewish heritage, nor of “improving” it. All in all, just to draw a bit of inspiration from it. The main thing is: not too much.

Gabi,

I’m not trying to market anything to you. I sincerely think you are ridiculous in this whole attempt to define a Jew other than through Jewish law. I have no idea whether someone who is not religious truly does not see how ridiculous that is. As Rational said, Rabbi Michi talked about this in all the columns here on the subject. Trying to market means I am trying to move you to my side. That is not what is happening here. But I really do personally have such an observation: that the suffering of the Jews has something in it connected to their religion and not merely to their nationality. Even after the massive secularization in Turkey, no new nation was created because in truth, aside from the Jewish people, an ordinary nation simply was not defined by some religion. The Jews are simply different. I don’t know whether if I weren’t religious I would see that, but now that I do see it—it is an observation that stands on its own. It may be that my faith in religion enabled it, but it does not stem from it.

Unlike the Sabbath issue—where I agree with you completely, and I keep the Sabbath and want Sabbath observance in public institutions not out of socialism but out of the Torah (not by way of coercing secular people, because coercion does not apply in Jewish law to children captured among the gentiles, only to believers)—and unlike homosexuals, where naturally I personally do not care about sociological definitions of family and I would not try to coerce non-homosexual relations in the same way I would not coerce private Sabbath observance, and yet homosexual marriage seems to me a ridiculous thing (from the conservative in me and not because of Torah commandments; you can understand that this can seem ridiculous even to someone who is not religious, after all in the non-religious Arab world this too is considered ridiculous). That is, homosexual marriage is at the very least not equal to heterosexual marriage. (Even if I believed in equality between human beings—I think that concept is not defined at all—I still do not believe in equality between different kinds of marriages. Not all things are equal in the world. Just as the natural sciences are worth more as sciences than the humanities. Not all sciences are equal.) Therefore I would fight you also on the matter of homosexual marriage. In contrast to all that, I am not trying to persuade you that Reform conversion is something that you too ought to reject, or that the Jewish nation is defined through religion. It simply seems so ridiculous to me that I tell you it is ridiculous (absurd), and that’s all. An absurdity is something where if a person does not see the problem in it, he lacks understanding in that matter. And secular opinion on this issue is simply a lack of understanding (not even an error). I will not try to persuade you of it. At most, to explain myself. It is indeed arm-twisting, but gently.

In general I have no desire to market anything. Marketing is for people who lack self-confidence in their faith and need it reinforced. As for me, I allow myself not to know everything, and in any case I am only occupied with explaining why I think what I think to someone who tries to understand me, and that’s all. There is indeed such a thing as spreading Torah and bringing Jews back to repentance. But that is not done through cheap marketing but through explanation (that is not the same thing as marketing). And yes, I would do that with respect to Kabbalah.

By the way, most religious people do not believe in the Torah because of their belief in a certain historical event, but because of questions related to the meaning of their existence and matters of reward and punishment for good and evil. Belief in the giving of the Torah is a derivative matter, part of a broader general faith.

Emanuel my friend,
Let’s leave aside the ever-renewing and branching parts. I’ll return to the categorical disconnection of nationality from religion, and because Mr. Rational recently presented his position in detail, I’ll write my view as a response to what he said. Truthfully, you raised several interesting issues, but if we go into them we’ll never get out.

Rational,
You presented your position very nicely. Now see how I look at things.
In the past, entry into the national club was through the gates of religion and attachment to the religious nation. Today the nation (the club) has changed, and accordingly the way of attaching oneself to it has changed too. Religion is a garment worn by the nation. In the past they tightened the buttons of the religious suit close close to the body, and today many have respectfully tossed that old suit into the bin. This is a process many other peoples have undergone as well.

I have no sharp definition of who is a Jew, and I am not looking for one. Do you have a definition of who is an Italian? When you explain to me who is an Italian, I’ll explain to you who is a Jew. When you look at the collection of religious and secular Jews in the world or in the country, do you not see them as a nation even without the religion? What do the Filipinos and Druze and Uzbeks and Argentinians have that the Jews in particular do not?! Good Lord, man! I don’t even know how to begin thinking about such a strange position.
I wasn’t talking specifically about the State of Israel, because the nation preceded this state. The Law of Return tries to capture in sharp legal definitions the delicate definition of who belongs or attaches himself to the nation, and obviously that cannot always succeed exactly. I don’t insist on the term conversion, but it’s also not merely naturalization. You can call it absorption and integration (and in the nation-state of the Jewish people, one who is absorbed also receives citizenship).
Dialectical tricks for attacking definitions can be done to every concept. What is orange juice? What is a language? The boundaries are fluid and blurry, and it’s pointless to demand from me a formulation of sharp criteria for such concepts.
Let me sharpen it. If a Chinese person in a remote village decides to convert (Orthodox conversion according to all the protocols), he really does not get any closer to the Jewish nation. He is a Chinese person of the Jewish religion, and for me, for example, there is not the slightest shred of connection to him. And conversely, as I keep saying and I still don’t understand what grates people about this, a Brazilian Christian can draw close to the Jewish nation while sacrificing potatoes to the Viking goddess of wrath. Religion is one thing, nationhood another; billions in the world see it that way, and nothing is simpler.

No. I do not see a connection between the whole collection of religious and secular people throughout the world if I take religion out of the story. Not for nothing, during the emancipation, in the golden age of the Reform movements, when they saw Judaism as only a universal religion with rules of moral ethics, they said they belonged to the nation of the state in which they lived, to the people of the state in which they lived, and that they were Jews only in religion. And that there was nothing connecting them to Orthodox Jews, nor between themselves and Reform Jews in other communities (except belonging to the same religion, according to them—but not in nationhood and common fate). And not for nothing, Orthodox streams influenced by this renaissance spirit adopted similar definitions. Certain German Orthodox rabbis, and also Hungarian ones, began to define themselves too as belonging to their local nations, and declared that they had not a shred of connection to Reform and secular Jews who in their opinion had severed themselves from the religion, and that they had more in common with the Hungarians or Germans among whom they lived than with Jews who had severed themselves from religion, because the former, according to them, were at least members of the same nation as they were. And it is no accident that precisely rabbis and Jews who remained more conservative, such as the Hatam Sofer, were among those who opposed these trends and said that from their point of view it was an explicit prohibition for a Jew to define himself as belonging to another people.

But leave it, I dug too much into history. If there is no God, and the Torah was not given, and all the Jews throughout the world do not have some common mission, then I don’t see any connection among all the Jews in the world at all. What connects me, as an Israeli Orthodox Jew, to a Reform Jew with an American ethos, way of thinking, worldview, and completely different values? The fact that we both eat sufganiyot on Hanukkah? Even there we celebrate the holiday differently, and he likely at the holiday table talks about freedom of religion and conscience and how Hanukkah shows that coercion is terrible, whereas for me Hanukkah is the victory of the sons of light over the sons of darkness, opposition to idolatry and foreign worship—the exact opposite of tolerance and freedom of conscience. We have no shared mother tongue. We watch different shows, and so on. From my point of view, right now I see a connection between us because I believe that God gave the Torah to the Jewish people, and because of that all Jews potentially share a common spiritual mission of keeping commandments. Therefore the Jewish mother that we both have connects us to that obligation. That and only that is the only substantial connection that can be shared among Jews in the world, from my perspective. That is the connection Jewish law established as essential.
What do Italians, Druze, and Georgians have such that their national definitions differ from the national definition of Jews? Very simple: Italians, Georgians, and Hungarians were never defined as peoples by their religion. They usually have a common language, shared foods, shared song, shared patriotism, and in things like that the definition is also usually more fluid and changeable. Jews do not have all these things, since they never underwent complete secularization. And the projects of Ahad Ha’am and Bialik, for example, to create such a culture failed (and rightly so in my opinion). There is nothing wrong with a Brazilian Christian marrying a secular Jewish woman and integrating into a secular/Reform Jewish community. There (from a secular point of view), if he is not Jewish by that, it still won’t make him Jewish even if he is very beloved by the members of the community there and volunteers at their community center every Friday. And if only because most Jews in the world will not see him as Jewish. And to define yourself as belonging to a particular people when a large part of that people, and even the majority in this case, does not see you as belonging to it—that is paradoxical and unacceptable. Whereas that Chinese person who converts Orthodox and keeps commandments is Jewish whether you like it or not, and whether all secular Jews of your type like it or not. Even if you do not accept him, his Jewishness is a substantial thing. He keeps commandments, he is obligated in Jewish law, and that is the historical definition of a Jew: a righteous convert and anyone born to a Jewish mother. And whoever wants to change the definition and provide a more acceptable one bears the burden of proof, not the reverse.

Good and fine. It seems to me the positions have been clarified sufficiently, and the thoughtful reader may judge.
In my opinion I am presenting a simple state of affairs of obvious matters.
But my throat, and your throat, and certainly Emanuel’s throat, are all hoarse together, and we urgently need to go look for some lemon juice. I came, I heard, I made myself heard, it turns out I didn’t manage to convince, and on the other hand I wasn’t convinced at all. Farewell, and thanks for the fish.

Gabi. I don’t think the issue here is persuasion. I didn’t come to persuade, but to ask how in your opinion one can define the essence of a secular Jew. Since you have no answer to that, and you cannot tell me what besides religion connects all Jews in the world into one people apart from the religious definition, I remained with my own view. If you had brought me values unique to “secular Jewish culture” (or even shown me that such a shared culture among all secular Jews in the world really exists, even if emptied of content), I would say that I don’t agree with the definition, but that it is acceptable in a certain way. But as you said, the discussion is not leading anywhere, so let’s end it here.

I definitely do think the issue here is persuasion. And if there’s a chance of progress, I’m staying.
I asked you to define for me the essence of an Italian (there are Christians, secular people, Muslims, fascists, and democrats; there are Italians in Italy and in the U.S., in the village, in the city, in the countryside, in Sicily, in Florence, skinny ones, tall ones, beautiful ones, housewives and monks), and then I’ll know how to define for you the “essence” of a Jew. You will not find a sharp criterion with which you can classify every human being with a wave of the finger as Italian or not. At most you’ll be able to measure how close he is to the Italian nation. That’s how I look at the world, and I know how to say—without having a clear and sharp definition—that these and those people belong to the Jewish nation (and perhaps are attached to some extent also to additional nations). You relate to the Jewish people differently from all the peoples in the world, and I simply cannot see even the beginning of a clue for this strange treatment.
The truth is that if you ask me, there is a definitely possible chance that within two hundred years or a bit more, the religious margins of the Jewish people will drop off from the Jewish nation and separate into an alternative stream. The truth is that would be a bit of a shame, but not all that much.

An Italian is any person whose ethnic origin is Italian (ethnically Italian), and any person whose culture and customs are Italian, and also any person who takes part in maintaining the Italian state and is patriotic toward it (if at least he sees himself as such. I assume most Italians would regard such a person as Italian in that sense—as belonging to the state called Italy and as part of its society—even if he is detached from ethnic-Italian culture and history). The same, in my humble opinion, can be said about French, Germans, Danes, and so on. Those are indeed fluid definitions, but there—I gave one (or really three). And Jews have two such definitions: either a person who is Jewish in terms of origin and birth (born to a Jewish mother), or a person who joined the Jewish religion (a righteous convert). The other definitions are not accepted by most Jews. (I agree that someone born only to a Jewish father can be defined as Jewish ethnically or genetically, for he really does have Jewish roots, but he still does not belong to the Jewish people.) On the day there is an original secular Jewish culture shared by most secular Jews in the world, it would be possible to define one who attaches himself to it as Jewish in a cultural sense.

In his excellent series of columns on Judaism and Jewish identity, Michi described very well the opinion I’m presenting here.

Correction of a typo: of course “his origin,” not “his product.”

One more clarification: I of course think that the original, real, and authentic definition of a Jew is the halakhic definition. I’m only saying that if there were a real cultural-secular Jewish existence, there could be another alternative definition that would hold water. I would of course still think it mistaken, but it would be acceptable and real (just as certain Conservative converts, I assume, can be considered part of another parallel Jewish existence, even if in my opinion it is mistaken).

The reason I say there is no real secular Jewish existence today is: A. because I think most Jews are not secular nowadays, and the religious and traditional are not marginal at all, since abroad every Jew who is not such (not traditional / Orthodox religious and/or conservative Conservative) assimilates almost automatically into the society in which he lives. And B. because even those who do remain secular but do not assimilate already think in the same language, speak the same language, and believe in the same Western democratic values as their gentile neighbors. Therefore there is no such creature today as secular Judaism. It is a minority that exists among you and among certain elites, and it certainly is not the majority. Here in Israel, the majority are somewhere on the spectrum of traditional to lightly religious.

An interesting way of defining national belonging according to scientific success was suggested by Albert Einstein, who said:

‘If my theory of relativity is proven correct, the Germans will call me a German, the Swiss will call me a Swiss, and the French will call me a great scientist; if the theory of relativity is disproved, the French will call me a Swiss, the Swiss will call me a German, and the Germans will call me a Jew.’

In short: ‘the theory of national relativity’ 🙂

Best regards,
Levi & Ger