A Semen-al Issue

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