Month: July 2019

PATRILINEAGE, NOT MATRILINEAGE, IS GOD’S DESIGN FOR THE JEWISH PEOPLE           

Introduction

Judaism has two conflicting ways of determining Jewish lineage and inherited status.  Status relates to whether a Jewish male is a Kohen, Levi, or Yisroel. It is the inherited role that men played in the religious duties of the Holy Temples. Today, it exists as an honorarium in synagogue and as a record of lineage, should a third Holy Temple be constructed.  For the first 2000 years, both Jewish identity and Jewish status were determined patrilineally (descending along the male line from the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then on from father to son).

After the destruction of both Holy Temples, in the second century CE, the Talmud changed the method of Jewish lineage of a child to that of matrilineal origin (if the mother is Jewish, the child is Jewish). Status identification, however, remains to this day patrilineal.

Scholars have attempted to find scriptural authority, or a rational reason, for the 180° change to matrilineal Judaism. Their speculations have included such rationales as:

• Historically, the mother of a child could be easily identified, but not the father. That rationale has been mooted by the advent of DNA testing, which conclusively makes that determination;
  
• Matrilineality may have resulted from an episode of Ezra the Scribe, in particular, his travail with Jewish men marrying indigenous women, at the time of the reconstruction of the second Holy Temple;
  
• The simple notion of the intimacy of motherhood; and
  
• Multiple other conjectures.

The examination of the distinction between patrilinealism and matrilinealism is not simply an academic exercise. It goes to the very heart of the issue of who is a Jew, and whether birth is the only real way of acquiring Jewish identity.

This paper is divided into three sections.

The first section is a critical look at whether the Talmud had authority to change God’s design for the creation of the Jewish people.

The second section examines the significantly destructive impact on Judaism that resulted from the change to matrilinealism.

The final section demonstrates how matrilinealism denies 40% of all Ashkenazi Jews their Jewish identity.

I.  The Written Torah

The Written Torah (Torah Katav) is the DNA of Jewish existence. It recounts the exact details of God’s creation of the world. It contains the only history of the Jewish people, from the selection of Abraham until his descendents appear on the border of Canaan (Israel), poised to take possession of the land which God had promised to them. No other contemporaneous account confirms or denies that history.

• Without the Written Torah, the Hebrew patriarchs, matriarchs, and the stories of their lives do not exist.
• Without the Written Torah, God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants does not exist.
• Without the Written Torah, the Jewish people, their obligation to their God, and their corresponding entitlement to the Land of Israel does not exist.
• Without the Written Torah, the Ten Commandments, and associated civilized rules of human behavior would not exist.
• Without the Written Torah, the Jewish people do not exist.

It is in that Written Torah that God selected the patriarchs and their seed (“zera”) as the template for the design of the Jewish people. Reference is made to “design” because, at the time of selection, there was no people, only a man, Abraham, and his barren wife, Sarah.

Why are the seeds of the patriarchs the golden thread into which is woven the fabric of the Jewish people?  The answer is quite simple.  It is because God, in the Old Testament, repeatedly prescribed it and presumptively designed it to fit within his blueprints of human genetics: 

1. In Genesis 12(7), God appears to Abraham (then Abram) and in referring to the land of Canaan tells him, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.”
2. In Genesis 12(7), God appears to Abraham (then Abram) and in referring to the land of Canaan tells him, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.”
   
3. In Genesis 17(6-8), God tells Abraham that he will make him exceedingly fruitful and that he will sire Kings.  God promises that he will give to Abraham and to Abraham’s seed all of the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.
   
4. In Genesis 17(10-12), God reminds Abraham of the earlier covenant negotiated between God, Abraham and the seed of Abraham and requires that a token of that covenant be represented by the circumcision of every male child.
   
5. In Genesis 26(2-4), God confirms to Isaac the covenant with Isaac’s father Abraham.  God promises to make Isaac’s seed multiply as the stars of the heaven and in Isaac’s seed will all the nations of the earth be blessed.  In Genesis 28(14), God tells Jacob that his seed shall be as the dust of the earth.
   
6. Deuteronomy 34(4-5) God allows Moses, prior to his death, to look at the land to which he has brought the Jewish people and reminds Moses that he has given this land to the seed of the patriarchs.
   
7. In all biblical references in which the word seed is used the Bible employs the word “ZERAH” which, even today, is translated as Semen.

In the multiple Torah references in which God describes the concept of his designed people, there are three essential requirements: seven

1. The People must be lineal descendants of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
   
2. Their descent must derive from the “zera” (semen) of the patriarchs and their lineal male descendants.
   
3. Male descendants of the patriarchs must be circumcised on the eighth day following their birth. It is a mandate directed to the very instrument that delivers the semen, which is the thread of Jewish continuum.

The unassailable logic of God’s patrilineal design

Patrilineality is not a cabal designed by Jewish men in order to assert masculine domination over the Jewish faith. The design of all procreation was created by God, as part of His plan of the world in which we all live. It is He, and He alone, who designed a system containing X and Y chromosomes, wherein male and female identity is determined during the mating process. It is He, and He alone, who designed the Y (male) chromosome to be virtually immutable and thus carry its message unaltered from generation to generation. It is He, and He alone, who designed the X chromosome to be subject to change with each generation.

It is God, in the Torah, who, through the provision for “zera,” takes the virtually immutable Y chromosome and makes it the avenue for the continuity of his people. Thus, the patrilineal lineage created by Him and selected by Him assures that his people will remain true to his design.

The written transcription of the Torah, delivered orally by God to Moses and the Jewish people at Mount Sinai in the Thirteenth Century BCE, is the lifeblood of the Jewish people. We love it, we honor it, we live it, martyrs die wrapped in it,we reread and internalize its contents “sedra” by “sedra,” every week of our lives.

We have accepted it as the declared word of our living God. It makes no difference whether it was written by the finger of God, as is suggested in Exodus 31(18), in Deuteronomy 9(10), or is the composite historical recollection of several scribes, it is the rootstock of our identity, our mission, and our faith.

Our Torah is not Wikipedia, subject to edit by its readers, however well-intentioned they may be. The Torah is immutable. Not the Sanhedrin, the Men of the Great Assembly, the Sadducees or the Pharisees, not the Tannaim or Ammoraim, not the Gaonim, or any of the subsequent interpreters or sages of Israel, have the authority to change one word of our Written Torah. The substitution, by the Talmud, of matrilineal descent for patrilineal descent, and the resultant disfiguration of the Jewish people was an assault on the Torah, and a rejection of the authority of God. The Torah, within reasonable limits, can and should be interpreted, but it cannot be disfigured.

During biblical times, it was not unusual for Jewish men to marry non-Jewish women. These women came within the Jewish community as” Gers” (sojourners), with their rights and privileges fully protected by the Torah. Though not technically Jewish, these women were treated as part of the Jewish community, and their children, issue of Jewish fathers, were Jewish under patrilineal law. It was a simple and workable system that continued through the end of both Holy Temples.

The rise of Talmudic adventurism

What caused the authors of the Mishnah, the Talmud’s initial work, to abandon the Written Torah’s basic rule of Jewish procreation, and to adopt matrilineality?  Many believe that it was Ezra’s consternation on finding that those sent to rebuild the second Holy Temple had established liaisons with indigenous women. When he discovered that, he assembled the Jewish men and received their promise to abandon their foreign mates. Then he did something which many feel was reprehensible and both morally and religiously wrong. He secured the men’s agreement to abandon the children who were issue of their relationships with the indigenous women.

Abandonment of children is morally wrong, but considering that the children themselves were Jews, born of the “zera” (seed) derived from the patriarchs, it was also religiously wrong. Many view this incident as the inauguration of the idea of matrilinealty, though that concept did not become Talmudic law until several hundred years later.

Shaye J.D. Cohen, in his scholarly work called “The Beginnings of Jewishness,” thoroughly examines the possible reasons for transition to matrilineality, and concludes that the reason is not fully answerable.

II.  Worse than the Talmud’s rejection of the authority of the Written Torah, was the fallout from that decision

• Jewish men who marry Gentile women feel obliged to have their wives convert so that, under matrilinealism, their children are considered Jewish. In fact, Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, is a genetically tribal faith. The conversion process simply invites the convertee into a relationship with Jewish law, but only a Jewish male can provide the “zera,” the semenal Y chromosome that makes one a Jew.
• Even amongst the denominations that accept rabbinical conversion, there appears to be significant disagreement as to which denomination is capable of effecting that magical process of making a Jew.  The more traditional denominations will not accept conversions by the more liberal ones, and occasionally they will reject conversion from their very own rabbis. Sadly, one can find advertisements in some Jewish communities for speedy and facile conversions to accommodate the growing intermarriage market.
• Battles among the Jewish denominations over the validity of their conversion process confuses the issue of Jewish identity in the present and for successive generations.
• Children of Jewish fathers and gentile mothers have been robbed of their Jewish identity, and are obliged to undertake a superfluous and expensive conversion process if they wish to be restored to their rightful biblical heritage. In truth, since more than 50% of Jewish males in America today are engaging in intermarriage, matrilineal Judaism is causing the loss of more Jews than the Spanish Inquisition.
• God’s covenant with Abraham in the Torah expressly incorporates the lineal descendants of the patriarchs as parties to that covenant. That is later confirmed by Moses in Deuteronomy. When the Talmud changes the Jewish children from patrilineal to matrilineal descendants, we are altering the parties to the covenant with God, and therefore significantly eroding our biblical entitlement to the land of Israel as our homeland. Not even the Talmud can switch covenant parties on God without His consent.

III.  Matrilinealism denies Jewish identity to millions of Ashkenazi Jews

There are approximately 14 million Jews in the world today. Ashkenazi Jews comprise more than 80% of world Jewry. The remaining Jews are represented by the Sephardic Jewish Community (Jews from Iberian Peninsula Jewish lineage) and Mizrahim (Middle Eastern Jews).

While recent genetic studies have concluded that the world’s distinctive Jewish populations are culturally, physically and genetically related to each other, there are differences. There is a perceivable, but nominal difference in the skin tone between Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews. Sephardic Jews tend to have darker hair coloring. There is, however, a significant difference in the diseases that uniquely impact Ashkenazis, but not the other Jewish populations.

In a June 14, 2017 article from the National Gaucher Foundation, the five most common Ashkenazi genetic diseases are listed:

• Gaucher disease (1 in 10)
• Cystic fibrosis (1 in 24)
• Tay-Sachs disease (1 in 27)
• Familial  Dysautonomia (1 in 31)
• Spinal Muscular Atrophy (1 in 41)

Those distinctions have, for some time, suggested a difference in the Ashkenazi genetic profile and history from those of the rest of the Jewish community.

That genetic difference was first scientifically identified by David Goldstein, Ph.D., from the Center for Genetic Anthropology at the University College in London, in 2002. He found that Ashkenazi Jewish women appeared to be descended from non-Jewish Europeans. In 2006, Doron Behar and Professor Karl Skorecki, of the Technion medical faculty at the Rambam Medical Center in Israel, found that 40% of the current Ashkenazi population is descendent from just four indigenous women, who originated in Eastern Europe and not from the Middle East.

Professor Martin Richard, of the Archaeogenetics Research Group of the University of Huddersfield in England, concluded that the male lineage of Ashkenazi Jews, based on Y chromosome studies, traced back to the Middle East, but the female mitochondrial origins are most closely related to Southern and Western European lineages.

These findings and others suggest that when Jewish men migrated into Europe, they brought few, if any, wives with them, and married European women. All of the scientific studies from authoritative sources, with modest variation, confirm that the female rootstock of at least 40% of the Ashkenazi Jews originated from European, non-Jewish women.

This is not a problem if we apply the principle of patrilineal descent, provided to us by the express language of the Torah. Jewish fathers breed Jewish children. If we use matrilineality to determine Jewish identity, as the Rabbinate currently does, there is an enormous problem. The 80% of the 14 million Jews that are Ashkenazi by descent represents 11,200,000 people. Thus, 40% of the Ashkenazi Jews that would be denied Jewish identity amounts to 4,480,000 Jews.

Conclusion

Under whose authority did the Talmud reject God’s patrilineal design for the creation and growth of its people?

Under whose authority did the Talmud switch the parties in God’s covenant with the descendants of the patriarchs from the children of the sons to the children of the daughters:  In Genesis, because Isaac was blind, Rebecca switched Jacob for Esau. God is not blind!

God requires obedience.  The Garden of Eden was eliminated because of a single misdeed; the Flood destroyed most of the world because some were wicked; Saddam and Gomorrah went up in smoke; a curious woman was turned to salt; in a moment of anger, Moses lost his right to enter Israel. The God of Israel is, by his own description, a vengeful God (Deuteronomy 32(35)). Clearly, it is very dangerous not to hearken to God’s word. How much more so is it, to openly challenge his authority in the creation of his people? Was it a coincidence that 2000 years of diaspora started at or near the transition to matrilinealism?

We Jews tend to venerate our sages. That is especially true if the wisdom of their judgments occured a long time ago. We view their decisions as being time-honored and part of our tradition. However, it does take character, strength and conviction to annul a decision made by the Tannaim which, though well-intentioned, is neither biblical, sagacious or beneficial to the Jewish people.

What we do not know, is whether those persons, into whom the organs of modern-day traditional Judaism are entrusted, have the leadership, strength  and courage to correct an old but unwise alteration, i.e., substituting matrilineal for patrilineal origin of the Jewish people.

Apropos of Moses’ prediction in Deuteronomy 29(30), the God for whom it was never wise to make the same mistake once, has given us a second chance. He has returned us from 2000 years of wandering the earth as denigrated second-class citizens in other people’s lands, to the land which he promised to the descendants of the “zera” (semen) of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Once again, those entrusted to the leadership of traditional Judaism have a solemn decision to make:

1. Return to God and his patrilineal design in the written Torah for the identity of the Jewish People; or
   
2. Support the Talmud’s deviation from the Torah’s design of the Jewish people and confirm matrilineal descent; or
   
3. Do absolutely nothing, and hide from the decision-making process by virtue of cowardice or by feigning indifference, with the hope that the issue will disappear.  Know that inaction is a decision in favor of matrilineality, albeit a weak and uncourageous one.

Upon your action or inaction, the future of the Jewish people rests. We are a people who are tired of underclass sojourning in other people’s lands.  May God grant you the wisdom to make the right decision and the courage to do something about it.  Remember!  The God that we love and admire has infinite virtues, but patience may not be one of them.

Douglas Kaplan

THE CONFRONTATION BETWEEN KARISM AND RABBINISM

In The Beginning

The Torah, the quintessential document of Jewish origin and creed, was delivered to a recently liberated people at Mount Sinai in the thirteenth century BCE. It did not appear in written form until the sixth century BCE.

It makes little difference whether the Torah was transcribed by the finger of God (as might be suggested in Exodus 31(18)( and Deuteronomy 9(10)), or is the composite historical recollection of several authors. It is the rootstock of Jewish identity and mission. The Written Torah prescribes the rules of conduct for civilized society. Virtually all written documents require some interpretation for proper application. The written Torah is no different, but it expressly rejects any additions, deletions or alterations to its text (Deuteronomy 4(2).

Through the process of interpretation alone, the true meaning of a phrase or document can either be identified, lost or distorted. The interpretation process requires a genuine desire to perceive the intent of the author and the restraint to withhold unintended construction. It would be a true contest, indeed, to determine whether the Torah or the United States Constitution was subject to more aggressive interpretive gymnastics.

Hermeneutics (Bible interpretation) started in earnest during the second Temple Period (516 BCE to 70 BCE) and continued through the Talmudic Period (200 CE to 500 CE). At first, it was an effort shared by all the dedicated sages of Israel.

Early Jewish Religious Philosophies

The introduction of the Written Torah during the second Temple Period generated several schools of thought regarding the Torah’s meaning and application. Ultimately, two major religious philosophies resulted:

• Pharisees:  The Pharisees were the spiritual fathers of

Rabbinism. They came from the middle or working classes of the Jewish community. Pharisees maintained that an afterlife existed and that God punished the wicked and rewarded the righteous in the world to come. They believed in a Messiah who would herald a new era of world peace. Pharisees were creative in their interpretation of the Torah and in the ritualistic observances that generated from their interpretations.

• Sadducees:  Sadducees represented an aristocratic,

wealthy, and traditional elite group within the hierarchy of Judaism. They were much more receptive to the influences of Greek culture that arrived with Alexander the Great and his successors. They were firm in their belief that man has free will and can choose between good and evil. They strongly believed that the soul is not immortal, that there is no afterlife, and that there are no rewards or penalties after death. They rejected the Pharisaic use of many observances which the Pharisees used to consolidate their power. Their rejection of afterlife was in direct opposition to emerging Christianity in which afterlife was an important element.

The Ultimate Political Struggle for Religious Dominance

Following the Maccabean victory (of Channukah fame) in the second century BCE, the descendents of Mattathias founded a dynasty which took control of the Temple’s High Priesthood and the leadership of the Hebrew nation. In 103 BCE, Alexander Janneus, the great grandson of Mattathias, was not content just to inherit the high priesthood. He wanted to be King of Israel as well. When the Crown was denied him, he ordered the slaughter of the Pharisee Priests.

Many of the Pharisees, including his brother in law, Simeon Ben Shetach, fled the country. Later, in contrition, Janneus invited the Pharisees to return and appointed his brother-in-law, a Pharisee zealot, as the head of the Sanhedrin. That appointment placed Shetach in a unique position. By use of discrete maneuvers, he changed the composition of the Sanhedrin from Sadducee to Pharisee. Although supported by the Essenes, of Dead Sea Scrolls fame, the Sadducees were outmaneuvered by the Pharisees and totally disappeared with the destruction of the second Temple in 70 BCE.

Thus, in the critical transition period, starting with the destruction of the second Temple through the beginning of synagogue worship, the Pharisees and their successors, the Rabbis, held sway. The Pharisees/Rabbis were deeply appreciative for Shetach’s commitment to their cause. To this day, on the 28^th day of Tevet, he is still celebrated for having successfully completed the expulsion of the Sadducees and having replaced them with the Pharisees.

Rabbi Shetach is the same individual who sentenced 80 women to death for having allegedly been involved in witchcraft.

The Beginning of the Talmud

As the Sadducees began to decline in number and influence, the task of Torah interpretation fell to the Pharisees and the Rabbis, their successors. Their opinions were varied and often differed from each other, leaving no distinct path through the Torah to be used by the Jewish community.

By the first century CE, it became obvious that the opinions of the Pharisees/Rabbis had to be assembled and codified, lest they be lost. In the first century CE, Yehuda HaNasi (Judah the Prince) undertook the effort to codify those opinions in a work entitled the Mishnah. His work was assisted by other rabbis who functioned under the title Tannaim. Later, during the Talmudic Period, a group of Rabbinical scholars known as Amoriam opined expansively on the subject matter of the Mishna, expressing their own views. The written transcription of those writings is called the Gomorrah.

The Mishna, Gomorrah, and a third work known as the Midrash (a collection of Rabbinical commentaries, homilies, insights and exegesis on the Torah) constitute the Talmud, also known in Orthodox religious circles as the Torah She Bial Peh (The Oral Torah).

The Rise of Karism

The Karite movement surfaced in Baghdad in the seventh century CE in response to the Rabbinites deviation from the Written Torah. It arose to challenge what was viewed as a number of erroneous interpretations and unauthorized additions contained in the Babylonian Talmud authored in nearby Mesopotamia. The Karites did not reject the Talmud, but neither did they feel themselves bound by it.

The Karites insisted that the interpretation of the Torah should be limited to those conclusions that can honestly and reasonably be derived from the clear meaning of the language under examination, without rejection, addition, or subtraction, all of which are expressly prohibited by the Torah.

The term Karite is derived from the original name of the old Hebrew words for the Bible “Mikra Kara”. Karaism means scripturalists, as distinguished from Rabbis, who refer to themselves as Rabbonim or as the Talmidim (followers of the Talmud).

The Golden Age of Karism occurred between the tenth and eleventh centuries CE. Karite Jews obtained autonomy from Rabbinite Jews in the Muslim world, established their own institutions and held high positions in that environment. At one time, the number of Jews affiliated with Karism was as much as 40% of world Jewry.

Early in the 10^th century, the Saadia Gaon, head of a Babylonian Rabbinical Academy, took upon himself the confrontation between the Rabbinical and the Karite views, a battle that ended up permanently severing the two Jewish communities. Karaism in a weakened position continued in Iraq, Egypt, Persia, Lithuania and Poland to this day. Currently, it is estimated that there are approximately 40,000 Karites living in Israel, with smaller communities in Turkey, Europe and the United States.

Historians view the Karites as having channeled the views of the second Temple Sadducees in order to protect the integrity of the Torah delivered to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai. Like the Sadducees, they maintained that the Jewish people are patrilineal in origin and reject the biblically unauthorized change to matrilinealism.  They do not accept the notion of life after death in the world to come.

In the written Torah, God describes in great detail his creation of the world in which we live. Karites maintain that God in Genesis would not have inadvertently forgotten to mention a second world which he created. Could it be, they ask, that the world to come (Olam Habah) is a construct created by Rabbis to reward those who fastidiously follow the regimens of Rabbinical Halacha (law).

The interpretation of the written Torah during the latter part of the second Temple is largely responsible for the spirit and dimensions of modern day Judaism.

Examples of How Karism and Rabbinism Differ:

•  Torah as the Immutable Doctrine of Jewish Creed and Identity

Karism is especially aggrieved by the notion that the Talmud, also called the Oral Torah, is claimed to be of equal dignity with the Torah given by God at Mount Sinai. In order to provide divine authority to their Oral Torah, the Rabbis suggest that the Rabbinical disputations of the Talmud were revealed at Mount Sinai in 1280 BCE, only to be incorporated by the Rabbis in the Talmud more than 1500 years later. The Karites reject the treatment of the Talmud as a second Torah and view its conjured divine authority from Mount Sinai as a thinly veiled sham.

Two Torahs, like two presidents or two Gods, is an invitation to abject confusion and conflict. Under the Written Torah, a child born of a Jewish father and a Gentile mother is Jewish, since the child ascends through his father to the “Zera” (semen) of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as provided in Genesis. Under the Oral Torah, that same child is a Gentile since his mother is not Jewish. Under the written Torah, God created one world while under the Oral Torah there is a second world, (L’Olam Haba’ah), the world to come. Under the written Torah there is no life after death while, under the Oral Torah there is reward and punishment in response to how you lived your life on earth. Under the written Torah, a chicken salad sandwich and a glass of milk is totally permitted, while it is an anathema under the Oral Torah.

Equating a written Torah, which is the transcribed word of God, with an oral Torah, which is the transcribed word of the Rabbis, is an assault on monotheism. Essentially, the Karites believe that the Rabbis, in labeling their Talmud as a Torah have bootstrapped themselves up to the level of a deity. It is vaguely similar to the Christian notion of Trinity (which incorporates the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), which attempts to qualify as monotheistic.

Karism seeks to identify and emulate the original Judaism. It is a composite of the Judaism practiced by the Sadducees, Boethusians, Ananites and the Essenes. Its focus is on living a Jewish life within the reasonable parameters of the Torah without additions, deletions or alterations. They reject the notion of the Pharisees/Rabbis that the interpretations of the Torah by particular teachers were divine and are elevated to the level of the Torah itself.

• The Ritual Blessing over the Sabbath Candles on Friday Evening 

After the fifth century CE, Rabbinate Jews invited the Sabbath with the blessing of the Sabbath lights (generally two candles). Karite Jews have no such requirement or custom because there is no provision in the Torah for that procedure.

It is suggested, that the alleged “God-directed” blessing over the Sabbath’s candles was prescribed by the Rabbis for practical, rather than religious, reasons. In pre-electric homes, light was provided by candles. Karite Jews followed the biblical mandate to, “kindle no fire during the Sabbath”.

In order to achieve light in their homes on Friday evening, Rabbinate Jews made the lighting of candles into a religious event (The Jewish Book of Why, p. 168). The blessing appears as a direction from God to light the Candles. Actually, no such direction ever existed. Why is this manufactured blessing not a violation of the third of the Ten Commandments, which requires that God’s name should not be taken in vain?                                                                                                                                          

• The Daily Donning of Tefillin by Post Bar Mitzvah Males

Jewish men who follow Rabbinical tradition are obliged to place tefillin (phylacteries which are constructed of leather straps and boxes containing recitations from Deuteronomy 6(5-9)) on their forehead and arm. Rabbinism does not require Jewish women to follow the same practice. The obligation comes from the scriptural provision, “and thou shall bind them for a sign upon thy hand and they shall be as frontlets between thy eyes”.

Karites are not obliged to put on tefillin. They reason that since words are normally not bound on one’s head and arms or upon the doorpost of one’s house, the mandates are simply figurative, metaphorical and aspirational. Karites apply the same rationale to affixing mezuzahs to the door posts of one’s house.

One can easily see the consternation and bizarre effect of taking biblically figurative language and applying it literally. For example, in Leviticus 26(41) and Jeremiah 4(4), reference is made to, “persons with uncircumcised hearts”.

• The Patrilineal Origin of Jewish Children

Karite Judaism historically follows patrilineal descent as was followed by the Jewish people for the first 2000 years of its existence. In the latter days of the second Temple, shortly before the birth of Jesus, the Pharisees, by fiat, simply changed the origin of Jewish children by requiring a Jewish mother instead of a Jewish father. In doing that, they effectively altered the composition of the Jewish people from that which is prescribed in

Genesis12(7), 17(6-8), 17(10-12), 26(2-4), 28(14) and Deuteronomy 34(4-5). In all of those provisions, God designs the Jewish people to be derived through the Zera (semen) of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That process can only be achieved through paternal involvement and is the same genetic formula used today to identify Cohanim as direct descendents of Aaron, the brother of Moses. The Karite community still maintains patrilineal origin of Jewish children.

• The Laws of Kashruth (Permissible Foods for Consumption)

Both Rabbinical and Karite traditions follow the Kashruth laws of the Torah. While there are myriad small deviations, there is one major departure. Exodus 23(19) provides that, “thou shalt not seethe (boil) a kid in his mother’s milk”. From this provision, the Rabbis have derived the conclusion that all milk and all meat including chicken, must be separated from each other. Thus, the Rabbis conclude that milk, or its products, cannot be consumed together with any meat from any source.

The Karites deem this Rabbinical construction woefully overbroad and unjustified and thus a prohibited addition to the written Torah. They observed that, had God intended to separate all meat from all milk, he certainly could have so declared. They view the inclusion of chicken as a meat as gilding the lily, as chickens do not give milk. Accordingly, followers of Karite Judaism, with the exception of a mother animal and its offspring, do not require the separation of meat and milk, nor all the dishes and utensils required to serve them.

• Prayer Customs and Demeanor

Judaism, like the Muslim faith, was born and matured in the Middle East. In that locale, it is customary to remove one’s shoes in the holy place and to prostrate oneself before one’s God. Karite Jews follow that regimen. While that may appear strange to Ashkenazi Jews, it is not at all uncommon in many other faiths. Asians remove their shoes in their place of worship and Christians kneel in prayer. These actions are symbolic of humbling oneself in the presence of a deity.

Conclusion

Jews who follow the Rabbinic tradition (which includes Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, etc.) have much in common. They share the same recent matrilineal genetic origin, and a faith rooted in the Torah, as modified by the Talmud. The denominations vary, not as much in their articles of faith, as in their degree of practice and how closely they have assimilated into a Gentile world.

The Torah by its express terms rejects alterations, additions, and deletions and thus implies that it is fully able to handle the needs of all future generations through reasonable interpretation of its text. That view, however, seems to be lost on the Rabbinate, which has in a number of ways added to, subtracted from and grossly modified the clear language of Torah text.

In all fairness, the United States Constitution, which many have been brought up to believe is an immutable document, has been amended 27 times. The difference lies in the fact that the Constitution provides for and contemplates amendment, while the Torah does not. The Karites believe that life in the modern era is totally amenable to the reasonable interpretation of the Torah as originally written. They maintain that their existence today is a testimonial to that belief. The original concept of Karism was that each Jew had the right to personally interpret the Torah within its reasonable parameters. The Karite synagogues of today have their own doctrinaire views of what constitute such reasonable interpretations.

What appears to trouble the Karites is that the Rabbis, through their Talmud, have set themselves up as the sole arbiter of the meaning of the written Torah and that their interpretations have significantly changed the Torah. Perhaps what aggrieves them the most is that Rabbinical changes,  interpretations and expansions of the written Torah, as appear in the Talmud, are now being offered as an oral Torah, of equal dignity with that delivered at Mount Sinai.

 Two Torahs that have diverse provisions suggests that there is more than one God, a conclusion assuredly rejected by both Karism and Rabbinism.

Douglas  C. Kaplan.