ShyGuyInChicago
September 6th, 2010, 02:54 PM
I read an article by a woman who herself converted to Judaism and feel that matrilineal descent as a requisite for being considered Jewish (other than converting) is out of date.
http://www.angelfire.com/retro/purple_vinyl/matrilineal.html
Matrilineal Nonsense
Another thing which pisses me off about some people in the Orthodox community is how they insist that the concept of matrilineal descent is still valid today. That is, a child born of a Jewish woman is automatically Jewish no matter the circumstances of the birth or if the child is adopted by a goyishe family or the woman has converted to another religion or the child is raised in another religion even within the same family. Unless this child is born into a family that intends to raise the child Jewish, there's absolutely no point whatsoever in claiming that this child is Jewish when no one else but people on the theological right see it that way!
I can totally understand how this theory was once valid. If you had to convert to Christianity to save your life, such as during the Inquisition, there would be no doubt as to the religion of your child(ren) if and when it became safe for you to return to actively and openly practising Judaism again. And if you went through a confused state in your youth, like rebelling against rules and traditions just to piss off your parents, like intermarrying and getting baptised, your child(ren) would also not be doubted if you someday came back to your senses and returned to Judaism. And God forbid if you were raped and you somehow decided to carry to term the child of this "man" who needs to be hung up from a tree by his totally undeserved sex organs, and even decided to raise it instead of putting it up for adoption (that must take a hell of a lot of courage and forgiveness; I could never carry to term a rapist's child!), nobody would doubt your child because you're the mother.
And speaking of rape, that is how the inheritance of Judaism passed from the traditional patrilineal model to the current-day matrilineal one. In the second century of the Common Era, under Roman rule, so many women were getting raped that it was impossible to ascertain whether the dad was the husband or the rapist who ought to have gotten hung up from a tree and picked at by vultures. That's why so many men wanted their wives to wear chastity belts when they went off on the Crusades and why more men than women get upset over sexual infidelity, since as a man you can never be 100% certain of the paternity of the child your wife gives birth to unless you chain her up in a harem 24/7 like is done in the Middle East, or unless your love and trust is so great that you know that this woman would never betray you by bedding down with another man. Plus, without DNA tests, the only parent anyone knows for certain is the mother, since everyone sees which woman the child pops out of, but you can never be too certain of the father, esp. if the woman is like one of those teenage sluts on the talkshows who slept with like 20 guys at the tender age of 14 and now can't find out which one impregnanted her out of wedlock with that ugly-ass mistake she should have had an abortion on. But I digress.
What once made valid sense is now an outdated rule. How you identify yourself should be way more central to whether or not you're Jewish, not what religion your mother was/is! And it really gets ridiculous, the way these people claim even if your hundred-greats grandma was born Jewish, and there was an uncontinued line of matrilineal descent leading up to you today, you yourself are Jewish by birth. That's nonsense! I can understand holding that as true if the female relative is still in recent memory, such as your mother, maternal grandmother, her mother, maybe even her own mother, but once you go back more than a few generations, it really loses its significance! Don't try to tell me that what some female ancestor was a thousand goddamn years ago has any impact on what I am today. Conversion to Judaism is a long and arduous and sometimes painful process. You shouldn't be informed you're automatically Jewish by birth just because of some woman a thousand years ago! How many people would feel Jewish or even identify themselves as Jewish that many generations down the line, huh? Your family has been whatever religion for centuries, you go to church every week, you have an eggroll at Easter, an Xmas tree, you baptise your kids, you have a grotto in your garden (that cave-like thing with a statue of Mary in it), yet according to the Orthodox and the UO you are now Jewish?! Wouldn't someone who goes to shul every week, observes all of the holidays and fasts, went to Hebrew school, has a mezuzah on every door except for the bathroom, be considered way more Jewish than the case mentioned above?
According to traditional Jewish Law, a newly divorced woman is forbidden from remarrying for I think three months, just in case she might be pregnant by her ex-husband and doesn't know it yet. There will be no question of the paternity of that child if she waits. Of course nowadays, people think nothing of launching right into a sexual relationship with their new flame instead of waiting to get to know that person better or even--gasp!--get married first! If more people had this kind of self-control about when they start to sleep with someone new (though the only person you should really ever sleep with is your spouse!), there wouldn't be so many women out there demanding paternity tests of possible fathers, and there would not only be no doubt as to who the mother is, but also as to who the father is.
What once was a wonderful way to assure a child's place in the Jewish community despite doubts about paternity is now just a laughable and outdated rule. That thousand-year connection is also smacking of racial identification, which is no better than what the Nazis did. Ugh.
http://www.angelfire.com/retro/purple_vinyl/matrilineal.html
Matrilineal Nonsense
Another thing which pisses me off about some people in the Orthodox community is how they insist that the concept of matrilineal descent is still valid today. That is, a child born of a Jewish woman is automatically Jewish no matter the circumstances of the birth or if the child is adopted by a goyishe family or the woman has converted to another religion or the child is raised in another religion even within the same family. Unless this child is born into a family that intends to raise the child Jewish, there's absolutely no point whatsoever in claiming that this child is Jewish when no one else but people on the theological right see it that way!
I can totally understand how this theory was once valid. If you had to convert to Christianity to save your life, such as during the Inquisition, there would be no doubt as to the religion of your child(ren) if and when it became safe for you to return to actively and openly practising Judaism again. And if you went through a confused state in your youth, like rebelling against rules and traditions just to piss off your parents, like intermarrying and getting baptised, your child(ren) would also not be doubted if you someday came back to your senses and returned to Judaism. And God forbid if you were raped and you somehow decided to carry to term the child of this "man" who needs to be hung up from a tree by his totally undeserved sex organs, and even decided to raise it instead of putting it up for adoption (that must take a hell of a lot of courage and forgiveness; I could never carry to term a rapist's child!), nobody would doubt your child because you're the mother.
And speaking of rape, that is how the inheritance of Judaism passed from the traditional patrilineal model to the current-day matrilineal one. In the second century of the Common Era, under Roman rule, so many women were getting raped that it was impossible to ascertain whether the dad was the husband or the rapist who ought to have gotten hung up from a tree and picked at by vultures. That's why so many men wanted their wives to wear chastity belts when they went off on the Crusades and why more men than women get upset over sexual infidelity, since as a man you can never be 100% certain of the paternity of the child your wife gives birth to unless you chain her up in a harem 24/7 like is done in the Middle East, or unless your love and trust is so great that you know that this woman would never betray you by bedding down with another man. Plus, without DNA tests, the only parent anyone knows for certain is the mother, since everyone sees which woman the child pops out of, but you can never be too certain of the father, esp. if the woman is like one of those teenage sluts on the talkshows who slept with like 20 guys at the tender age of 14 and now can't find out which one impregnanted her out of wedlock with that ugly-ass mistake she should have had an abortion on. But I digress.
What once made valid sense is now an outdated rule. How you identify yourself should be way more central to whether or not you're Jewish, not what religion your mother was/is! And it really gets ridiculous, the way these people claim even if your hundred-greats grandma was born Jewish, and there was an uncontinued line of matrilineal descent leading up to you today, you yourself are Jewish by birth. That's nonsense! I can understand holding that as true if the female relative is still in recent memory, such as your mother, maternal grandmother, her mother, maybe even her own mother, but once you go back more than a few generations, it really loses its significance! Don't try to tell me that what some female ancestor was a thousand goddamn years ago has any impact on what I am today. Conversion to Judaism is a long and arduous and sometimes painful process. You shouldn't be informed you're automatically Jewish by birth just because of some woman a thousand years ago! How many people would feel Jewish or even identify themselves as Jewish that many generations down the line, huh? Your family has been whatever religion for centuries, you go to church every week, you have an eggroll at Easter, an Xmas tree, you baptise your kids, you have a grotto in your garden (that cave-like thing with a statue of Mary in it), yet according to the Orthodox and the UO you are now Jewish?! Wouldn't someone who goes to shul every week, observes all of the holidays and fasts, went to Hebrew school, has a mezuzah on every door except for the bathroom, be considered way more Jewish than the case mentioned above?
According to traditional Jewish Law, a newly divorced woman is forbidden from remarrying for I think three months, just in case she might be pregnant by her ex-husband and doesn't know it yet. There will be no question of the paternity of that child if she waits. Of course nowadays, people think nothing of launching right into a sexual relationship with their new flame instead of waiting to get to know that person better or even--gasp!--get married first! If more people had this kind of self-control about when they start to sleep with someone new (though the only person you should really ever sleep with is your spouse!), there wouldn't be so many women out there demanding paternity tests of possible fathers, and there would not only be no doubt as to who the mother is, but also as to who the father is.
What once was a wonderful way to assure a child's place in the Jewish community despite doubts about paternity is now just a laughable and outdated rule. That thousand-year connection is also smacking of racial identification, which is no better than what the Nazis did. Ugh.