Question

Hello Rabbi Michi
 
 
 
 
In your latest column you briefly mentioned the issue of the burial of the female soldier who is a non-Jew of Jewish descent through her father.
 
I won’t ask about the halakhic leniencies that can or cannot be applied in such a case in order perhaps to bury her alongside Jews, but something else.
 
 
 
 
If this were a “technical,” formal matter and not an essential one—let’s put it this way: if that soldier and her family were accepted by all of Israeli society as equal in value, if one may call it that, like all her comrades—as an Israeli who died because she shared a certain common fate with the Jewish people—we are not checking right now whether in her lifetime she was a great righteous woman or a decent person; rather, we give honor, and perhaps one could even call it minimal affection and minimal sorrow over her death because of the circumstances of her death—
 
then one could suggest a simple technical solution to resolve the issue: a female or male non-Jew of Jewish descent who believes in the Torah of Israel and in the obligation to observe commandments, and because of that—and perhaps not only because of that, but also because of it—is willing to share in the civic and security burden and in a common fate with the Jewish people and its state, and as a result also in a religious covenant of destiny that includes, for example, minimal charity to synagogues or a yeshiva, participation in some of the holidays and prayers—then he or she is really in the category of what the Sages called a resident alien. In the words of the Sages, there is no derogatory label, disgust, or total alienation and estrangement toward a resident alien. He is like an Israelite—correct me if I’m wrong—in all the commandments between man and his fellow, since charity and acts of kindness are practiced toward him, and there is even a commandment to sustain him, even if the Israelite takes precedence over him. And even if some of the laws do not strictly apply to him as a full obligation, still it is proper to treat him according to those same laws—if I am not mistaken, Maimonides writes this.
 
If so, such a non-Jew, who does not want to convert, but protests—apparently justifiably—that people feel toward him a foreignness and hostility as toward other non-Jews toward whom there is no obligation: why shouldn’t he approach the rabbinate and request, as in ancient times, the status of resident alien? Then, even if one day he falls in war for the sake of the Jewish people, or by virtue of being their partner, he would not be publicized and presented to the public in a way that dishonors him as a foreign non-Jew; rather, he would be buried in a special section for the righteous among the nations, who have a share in the World to Come.
 
In your opinion, is the problem here technical, such that it can be solved this way, or essential?
 
I ask because this raised the following doubt in me:
 
If because of something like prejudices or stigmas part of society does not want to give respectful treatment to non-Jews of Jewish descent, even though from a halakhic perspective it would be appropriate to give such treatment to a large portion of them—
can something that comes out in a technical question like burial, or a separating fence, really help the issue at all? If the problem is not formal-halakhic, and not even a religious problem, but a social stigma, then what the hell do people want from the rabbinate? Can the rabbinate change a bad social attitude given to a mamzer? A bad attitude given to a person with a physical defect?
And in your opinion, would social stigmas and dishonest interpersonal behavior, perhaps grounded in a mistaken understanding of Jewish law, be corrected among the God-fearing public if its leaders instructed otherwise? Do you think it really starts from above, or from below?