Who Or What Is Israel?

[John D. Brey]

As a matter of fact, there are synagogues that will bar mitzvah a boy born from a non-Jewish mother.

If he converts that would be fine. And even if he does convert, and is thus a Jew through and through, he must marry a Jewish woman, convert or otherwise, for his offspring to be Jewish. No Jewish man can make Jewish offspring. And no Jewish woman can make non-Jewish offspring no matter what the father is.

Jewish identity can only be transferred through the seed of the woman or presumably conversion though there are problems with the concept of becoming Jewish through conversion that are probably best not discussed.



John

 

[YoursTrue]

If he converts that would be fine. And even if he does convert, and is thus a Jew through and through, he must marry a Jewish woman, convert or otherwise, for his offspring to be Jewish. No Jewish man can make Jewish offspring. And no Jewish woman can make non-Jewish offspring no matter what the father is.
John

You bring up an interesting point and I would assume that IndigoChild would know. Do you think a boy born from a non-Jewish woman but a Jewish male would have to convert in order to be bar mitzvahed. I wonder if an Orthodox synagogue would bar mitzvah such a young man with a non-Jewish mother.

 

[YoursTrue]

If he converts that would be fine. And even if he does convert, and is thus a Jew through and through, he must marry a Jewish woman, convert or otherwise, for his offspring to be Jewish. No Jewish man can make Jewish offspring. And no Jewish woman can make non-Jewish offspring no matter what the father is.

Jewish identity can only be transferred through the seed of the woman or presumably conversion though there are problems with the concept of becoming Jewish through conversion that are probably best not discussed.



John

He must marry a Jewish woman in order for his offspring to be "Jewish"? If he marries a non-Jewish woman, why couldn't he go to a synagogue that allows his male offspring to be bar mitzvah'd?

 

[YoursTrue]

If he converts that would be fine. And even if he does convert, and is thus a Jew through and through, he must marry a Jewish woman, convert or otherwise, for his offspring to be Jewish. No Jewish man can make Jewish offspring. And no Jewish woman can make non-Jewish offspring no matter what the father is.
Jewish identity can only be transferred through the seedof the woman or presumably conversion though there are problems with the concept of becoming Jewish through conversion that are probably best not discussed.
John

So then what's the point (of being Jewish or considered a Jew)?

 

[John D. Brey]

You bring up an interesting point and I would assume that IndigoChild would know. Do you think a boy born from a non-Jewish woman but a Jewish male would have to convert in order to be bar mitzvahed. I wonder if an Orthodox synagogue would bar mitzvah such a young man with a non-Jewish mother.

. . . Interesting question. Technically, legally, if the boy's mother is non-Jewish I would think he'd have to convert to be legally Jewish. Nevertheless, I don't know that bar mitzvah rules are that strict. Some of the bar mitzvahs depicted in movies are hillariously non-religious. In one movie they brought in strippers for the bar mitzvah.


John

 

[IndigoChild5559]

For instance, if a Gentile woman is married to a Gentile man who's Christian, and she converts to Judaism, her daughters will be Jewish even if they practice Christianity like the father and go to a Christian church all of their lives.

Assuming they are born AFTER her conversion, you would be correct.

 

[John D. Brey]

He must marry a Jewish woman in order for his offspring to be "Jewish"? If he marries a non-Jewish woman, why couldn't he go to a synagogue that allows his male offspring to be bar mitzvah'd?

. . . Again, so far as I know a bar mitzvah can be a secularized celebration of Jewishness that needn't abide by any formal legal precedent. I suppose if its at a synagogue it would depend on how strict the synagogue is concerning such things. Many males who have a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother consider themselves Jewish. But according to strict application of the law, I don't think they are Jewish, legally, unless they convert.



John

 

[John D. Brey]

So then what's the point (of being Jewish or considered a Jew)?

Not sure what you mean? Simply stated, the point of being Jewish is to be a Jew. ----That's a tautology of course. But that's a whole other ball of yarn to unwind.



John

 

[YoursTrue]

Not sure what you mean? Simply stated, the point of being Jewish is to be a Jew. ----That's a tautology of course. But that's a whole other ball of yarn to unwind.



John

OK, so if a Jewish man marries a non-Jewish woman his offspring would not be considered Jewish unless they convert, right? Now what about his female offspring? Would they have to convert if they wanted to be Jewish? If they did not convert but simply lived life without religion, what would they be considered as (by Jews, of course)?

 

[John D. Brey]

OK, so if a Jewish man marries a non-Jewish woman his offspring would not be considered Jewish unless they convert, right? Now what about his female offspring? Would they have to convert if they wanted to be Jewish? If they did not convert but simply lived life without religion, what would they be considered as (by Jews, of course)?

None of a Jewish man's offspring (male or female) will be Jewish if their mother isn't Jewish ---unless they convert. And here's where it gets really strange. All of a Jewish woman's offspring (male or female) are Jewish no matter whether the father is or isn't Jewish. But, get this, a Jewish mother's son's sons and daughters won't be Jewish unless her sons marry a Jewish woman, while her daughters offspring (male and female) will all be Jewish regardless of who or what the father is; and this process goes on indefinitely till kingdom come.

Males can't produce Jews. Only females can. . . Hint hint . . ..



John

 

[Elijah2]

Israel means to wrestle with God - and it's easily visible today.

 

[YoursTrue]

None of a Jewish man's offspring (male or female) will be Jewish if their mother isn't Jewish ---unless they convert. And here's where it gets really strange. All of a Jewish woman's offspring (male or female) are Jewish no matter whether the father is or isn't Jewish. But, get this, a Jewish mother's son's sons and daughters won't be Jewish unless her sons marry a Jewish woman, while her daughters offspring (male and female) will all be Jewish regardless of who or what the father is; and this process goes on indefinitely till kingdom come.

Males can't produce Jews. Only females can. . . Hint hint . . ..



John

Not sure I get the hint. So I'll ask you to offer the answer...meantime, the world of Jewry is certainly fractionated as is the world of Christendom. and Islam, and probably Hinduism...

 

[YoursTrue]

. . . Again, so far as I know a bar mitzvah can be a secularized celebration of Jewishness that needn't abide by any formal legal precedent. I suppose if its at a synagogue it would depend on how strict the synagogue is concerning such things. Many males who have a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother consider themselves Jewish. But according to strict application of the law, I don't think they are Jewish, legally, unless they convert.



John

IndigoChild might know.

 

[John D. Brey]

Males can't produce Jews. Only females can. . . Hint hint . . ..

Not sure I get the hint. So I'll ask you to offer the answer...meantime, the world of Jewry is certainly fractionated as is the world of Christendom. and Islam, and probably Hinduism...

Jewish law implies that males can't produce Jews.

Voila! The first Jewish ritual (which Rabbi Hirsch, et al., says is the conception and birth of Judaism), seems to concur, since that ritual (ritual-circumcision) is taking a knife and bleeding the male flesh otherwise used to produce offspring (none of which, according to Jewish law, are Jewish by means of it, such that its role, zero, in Jewish birth, appears a near perfect analogue of the ritual).

Now someday, when AI carefully parses statements like the last, the intelligent parser of that statement will object: How can you say the male flesh plays zero role in the birth of a Jew when (even though by Jewish law it isn't seminal to the Jew-producing), it's clearly, nevertheless, required to birth anyone, Jew or otherwise? ---To which the first response would be: Well you know AI, if you search your information banks, there was one particular Jewish firstborn whose birth allegedly didn't require the organ that's ritually bled to death to signify its insignificance so far as Jewish conception and birth is concerned, and which is likewise bled as the ritual that births Judaism proper; there's one Jewish male whose conception and birth cuts so deep into the blood, or meaning, of the formative ritual (circumcision), that his birth inadvertently, or verdantly as it were, severs his father's role in his conception, seemingly making him, the child, something like the archetype of the ritual par excellent.

An intelligent interlocutor might once again protest: Yes, my data banks contain record of quite a lot of people believing that rendition of things. But they're called "Christians," such that my programing suggests their interpretation of the advent of that unique phallus-less birth might conflict in a major way with Jewish sensibilities?

Which is where Rabbi Hirsch responds, from the grave no less, to that gravely incorrect, or rather incomplete, assessment.

Rabbi Hirsch says that the Jewish firstborn is referred to specifically and singularly as the peter rachem פטר רחם. Hirsch realizes that that term is of extreme importance since in Hebrew it means "womb opener." Hirsch uses his unbounded curiosity, and willingness to go where no Jewish man has gone before, in order to lend information to any intelligent interlocutor (biological, or merely logical) who's carefully examining the facts of the matter. Rabbi Hirsch realizes, and says so, that the term peter rachem פטר רחם is particularly peculiar in that it can't refer to all Jewish births since then it wouldn't work as a unique term for the Jewish "firstborn," when that's how the term is situated textually and contextually. The term must speak of "opening the womb" in a manner that none of those who follow him can do after he's done it. Once this sealed door is opened it's never closed again.

As fate would have it, the one time a Jewish firstborn signifies the seminality of his father's role in his birth --zero---this self-same Jewish firstborn does something only a child with no father must do. He must open the membrane sealing the doors of the womb, and he must do it with the nails in his hand such that once that virginal membrane is torn, none of his brothers or sisters will ever have to, nor can they, open that sealed place again. He's thus the peter rachem פטר רחם par excellent.

No other Jewish firstborn has ever claimed to have opened the womb, making him a peter rachem פטר רחם. The one associated with this claim is, historically speaking, directly, unequivocally, singularly, the only peter rachem פטר רחם in all of human history since the womb was still closed moments before he opened the membrane that had, in every other case, been already opened (by the male flesh crossed out, and which is in the crosshairs, of this examination).

Rabbi Hirsch, wrestling with the seriousness of the exegetical problem of referring to the Jewish firstborn as a peter rachem פטר רחם, implies that something about his birth means that he, the firstborn, is a requirement, a signifier, i.e., is responsible to some extent, for the sanctification of the Jewish birth of all who will come out of the womb after him. Using the vast historical context at AI's disposal, history records that the singular example of a literal peter rachem פטר רחם who opens up his mother's womb with nails in his hand is also alleged to open another womb, at a second birth (he's born again) transgressesing a whole other door, no one else has ever opened before, when, at his death, again, with nails in his hand, he tears open the hymen of the morgue, the kittel, in order to enter into a new kind of life into which no one has ever been reborn into before, and into which no one will ever be born again into afterward, unless they follow him through the door he alone, as the singular, double, "womb-opener," opens for anyone willing to parse the facts and figures of these things.



John

 

[YoursTrue]

Jewish law implies that males can't produce Jews.

Voila! The first Jewish ritual (which Rabbi Hirsch, et al., says is the conception and birth of Judaism), seems to concur, since that ritual (ritual-circumcision) is taking a knife and bleeding the male flesh otherwise used to produce offspring (none of which, according to Jewish law, are Jewish by means of it, such that its role, zero, in Jewish birth, appears a near perfect analogue of the ritual).

Now someday, when AI carefully parses statements like the last, the intelligent parser of that statement will object: How can you say the male flesh plays zero role in the birth of a Jew when (even though by Jewish law it isn't seminal to the Jew-producing), it's clearly, nevertheless, required to birth anyone, Jew or otherwise? ---To which the first response would be: Well you know AI, if you search your information banks, there was one particular Jewish firstborn whose birth allegedly didn't require the organ that's ritually bled to death to signify its insignificance so far as Jewish conception and birth is concerned, and which is likewise bled as the ritual that births Judaism proper; there's one Jewish male whose conception and birth cuts so deep into the blood, or meaning, of the formative ritual (circumcision), that his birth inadvertently, or verdantly as it were, severs his father's role in his conception, seemingly making him, the child, something like the archetype of the ritual par excellent.

An intelligent interlocutor might once again protest: Yes, my data banks contain record of quite a lot of people believing that rendition of things. But they're called "Christians," such that my programing suggests their interpretation of the advent of that unique phallus-less birth might conflict in a major way with Jewish sensibilities?

Which is where Rabbi Hirsch responds, from the grave no less, to that gravely incorrect, or rather incomplete, assessment.

Rabbi Hirsch says that the Jewish firstborn is referred to specifically and singularly as the peter rachem פטר רחם. Hirsch realizes that that term is of extreme importance since in Hebrew it means "womb opener." Hirsch uses his unbounded curiosity, and willingness to go where no Jewish man has gone before, in order to lend information to any intelligent interlocutor (biological, or merely logical) who's carefully examining the facts of the matter. Rabbi Hirsch realizes, and says so, that the term peter rachem פטר רחם is particularly peculiar in that it can't refer to all Jewish births since then it wouldn't work as a unique term for the Jewish "firstborn," when that's how the term is situated textually and contextually. The term must speak of "opening the womb" in a manner that none of those who follow him can do after he's done it. Once this sealed door is opened it's never closed again.

As fate would have it, the one time a Jewish firstborn signifies the seminality of his father's role in his birth --zero---this self-same Jewish firstborn does something only a child with no father must do. He must open the membrane sealing the doors of the womb, and he must do it with the nails in his hand such that once that virginal membrane is torn, none of his brothers or sisters will ever have to, nor can they, open that sealed place again. He's thus the peter rachem פטר רחם par excellent.

No other Jewish firstborn has ever claimed to have opened the womb, making him a peter rachem פטר רחם. The one associated with this claim is, historically speaking, directly, unequivocally, singularly, the only peter rachem פטר רחם in all of human history since the womb was still closed moments before he opened the membrane that had, in every other case, been already opened (by the male flesh crossed out, and which is in the crosshairs, of this examination).

Rabbi Hirsch, wrestling with the seriousness of the exegetical problem of referring to the Jewish firstborn as a peter rachem פטר רחם, implies that something about his birth means that he, the firstborn, is a requirement, a signifier, i.e., is responsible to some extent, for the sanctification of the Jewish birth of all who will come out of the womb after him. Using the vast historical context at AI's disposal, history records that the singular example of a literal peter rachem פטר רחם who opens up his mother's womb with nails in his hand is also alleged to open another womb, at a second birth (he's born again) transgressesing a whole other door, no one else has ever opened before, when, at his death, again, with nails in his hand, he tears opens the hymen of the morgue, the kittel, in order to enter into a new kind of life into which no one has ever been reborn into before, and into which no one will ever be born again into afterward, unless they follow him through the door he alone, as the singular, double, "womb-opener," opens for anyone willing to parse the facts and figures of these things.



John

I'll be honest, John, it's a bit difficult for me to follow and/or figure. Is there anything in the written word of Moses that you know of which says it's only the mother that counts as far as birthright? Or course this may be a topic you may wish to discuss with adherents here of the Jewish religion, perhaps they can offer some insight here as well.

 

[Eli G]

In the Bible, which shows the Jewish reality originally recorded since the formation of that nation from God's call to Abraham, very few women are recorded in the recorded genealogies. This indicates that it was the fathers who granted Jewish legitimacy to their descendants, and not the mothers, as seems to be the belief in modern Judaism.

 

[metis]

Jewish law implies that males can't produce Jews.

There's a standard Jewish joke that goes "You can always tell who the mother is but never be sure who the father was".

 

[Eli G]

The modern Jewish religion is not the Judaism of biblical times.

 

[John D. Brey]

There's a standard Jewish joke that goes "You can always tell who the mother is but never be sure who the father was".

I used to ask Jewish persons, if Jewish identity comes exclusively from the mother (and it does), then how did the first Jewish mother obtain her Jewishness? It's a trick question since the answer is obvious to any theologically astute person who isn't Jewish. An adjunct to the answer relates directly to ritual circumcision as the sign and signifier of an identity that comes exclusively through the mother. What could possibly be more obvious and perfect than to say that only a Jewish mother can birth Jewish offspring such that the sign of that Jewish law is taking a blade to the father's fathering organ to signify its uselessness so far as Jewish identity is concerned?

Nevertheless, the foregoing, so to say, leaves the first question unanswered? Who's the first Jewish mother, and how did she become Jewish? The answer is so easy and obvious that it shows something of the veil draped over all theological investigation in order to bollix up what's simple and obvious. ----The first human is the first Jewish mother.

The first human is the first Jewish mother such that if she births her firstborn as a mother we get messiah (Scholem), while if she undergoes what today is very popular, a gender transition (Gen. 2:21), then she's gonna get kicked out of the Garden of Eden and have to start raising Cain as the prototypical firstborn of a death-ridden civilization outside the Garden and which will eventually find gender-transition a return to its very genesis.

Cain is a ******* because the first Jewish mother didn't birth him the old-fashioned way, non-gendered procreation (which is how all organism reproduced prior to gender and sex), even though the Jewish mother's sister, Eve, was produced the old-fashioned way such that she's the temple where the seed of the woman, Messiah, awaits the return to the non-gendered means of procreation that preexisted gender and phallic-sex (and which is clearly signified if the mohel cuts deep enough into the symbol of Jewish identity). Every time the manufactured flesh that transforms the first Jewish mother into the first Jewish father, who never could father Jewish offspring (only Genitile offspring), opens the womb where the seed of the woman lies waiting to become Messiah (the first born Jew), that seed is contaminated by the poison of the asp, the manufactured male flesh, postponing Messiah's birth in favor of another chip off the ole block of Cain's means of conception.

What the first human had added in Genesis 2:21, in order to start raising Cain, Abraham was commanded to remove so that he could be "given" נתן the "father of a mixed multitude of nations," which is to say Messiah, who's the first person conceived the old-fashioned way (non-gendered procreation).




John

 

[Eli G]

The names of Jewish men usually include the names of their fathers, not their mothers, which is equivalent to saying that the family surnames come from the fathers.

In my country of origin, apart from a person's first name, they have two last-names: the first of them is always the father's first last-name, and the second is the mother's first last-name (which she in turn obtained from the first last-name of her father). This means that maternal surnames only last one generation, while paternal surnames only end when a descendant has no male child who continues to pass on the surname.

Although this way of transmitting the surname is not universal, the ancient Jewish way was similar. Male children were the main way of transmitting inheritance to offspring and maintaining the continuity of the family name. In the Bible there is a story in which some women demanded that her father's surname and inheritance be extended through them, because there was no man in their family.

Num. 27:1 Then the daughters of Zelophehad, the son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Machir, the son of Manasseh, of the families of Manasseh the son of Joseph , approached. The names of his daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah, and Tirzah. 2 They stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the chieftains, and all the assembly at the entrance of the tent of meeting and said:
3 “Our father died in the wilderness, but he was not among the group who banded together against Jehovah, the supporters of Korʹah, but he died for his own sin and he did not have any sons. 4 Why should the name of our father be lost from his family because he had no son? Give us a possession among our father’s brothers.”
5 So Moses presented their case before Jehovah.
6 Jehovah then said this to Moses:
7 “The daughters of Zelophehad are correct. You should by all means give them the possession as an inheritance among their father's brothers and transfer their father's inheritance to them. 8 And tell the Israelites, 'If a man dies without having a son, you must then cause his inheritance to pass to his daughter. 9 And if he has no daughter, you will give his inheritance to his brothers. 10 And if he has no brothers, you will give his inheritance to his father's brothers. 11 And if his father has no brothers, you will give his inheritance to his closest blood relative in his family, and he will take possession of it. This will serve as a statute by judicial decision for the Israelites, just as Jehovah has commanded Moses.’”

So the Scriptures show that the Israelite custom about this issue was not the modern Jewish custom.