Are Ashkenazis Really Jews?

Preface

The Written Torah provides that all children born of Jewish fathers are Jews (patrilineal-ism). In the early part of the 3^rd century CE, the Rabbis of the Mishna rejected the patrilineal-ism of the Written Torah and adopted matrilineal-ism in its stead. Since the beginning of the 21^st century, geneticists in the United States, Israel, and England have determined that a significant percentage of the Ashkenazi founding mothers were of European (non-Judaic) origin. Since 80% of all Jews today are of Ashkenazi origin, Rabbinical Judaism must determine who amongst its members and clergy are really Jews.

                                      __________________

Inasmuch as 80% of all of the 14.7 million Jews in the world today claim Ashkenazi origin, the question posed by the title is of significant consequence. To provide an answer to that question, three preliminary identities must first be established:

1. Who is a Jew, and how is that identity determined?
2. Who is Ashkenazi, and how is that identity determined?
3. What accepted legal authority has the right to determine whether Ashkenazis are Jews, and how is that determined?

 Who is a Jew?

The identity and origin of the Jew is a question that can only be answered by reference to the Written Torah. No other relevant historical data exists for that era. It is in the Torah that the Creator of the World served as the designer and originator of the Israelite nation.  That sacred and venerated Torah, alone, tells the story of the Israelite people who are the root source of Jewish identity.

The history of the Israelite nation began when God spoke to Abram (a.k.a. Abraham) and told him that he would make him a great nation, that he would bless him and curse those who cursed him, and that through Abram all families of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12(2-3)). At that moment of time, Abram was 75 years old and married to Sarai, who was 65 years of age and childless. From that unlikely beginning, the Israelite people were designed and created. The Written Torah subsequently recounts God’s hand in the lives and events of Abram’s son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob, a.k.a. Israel, the biblical patriarchs. It is through the patriarchs and the continuum of their seminal line that the people of Israel originated and continue in perpetuity.

On no fewer than six occasions in the Torah does God identify how the nation promised to Abraham will repopulate itself.

It is critical to observe and acknowledge that the continuity of the Israelite Nation promised to Abraham occurs genetically as it passes through the semen of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and subsequently through the semen of each successive paternal generation in perpetuity. Neither education, nor religious doctrine, nor a desire for gender equanimity are factors in identifying those who are members of the Israelite nation. It is also helpful to be mindful of the fact that women are not a source of semen.   

The real subject of our inquiry in this section is the identity of the Jew. Jews are members of a sub-community classification of the Israelite Nation. To identify the source of the Israelite Nation, we need to focus on the 12 Israelite tribes, which conquered Canaan on or about 1250 BCE. Each tribe represents descendants of the 12 sons of Jacob, a.k.a. Israel. Following their conquest, the tribes felt the need for a king to bind them together to form a unified and strong monarchy.

King Saul was anointed the first king of the unified monarchy in 1040 BCE, and was succeeded by King David in 1010 BCE. On the death of King David in 970 BCE, his son King Solomon succeeded him, built the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in the South, and died in 931 BCE.

Upon the death of King Solomon in 931 BCE, a delegation of the tribes confronted Solomon’s son and successor, Rehoboam, and requested assurances that they would be treated kindly and thoughtfully under his reign. Rehoboam’s response was “My father disciplined you with whips. I will discipline you with scorpions.”

Upon that response, the ten northern tribes of Israelites broke away from the United Kingdom of Israel and formed the Northern Israelite kingdom of Israel. The remaining three southern tribes of Judah, Benjamin and Simon formed the Southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah.

In 722 BCE, the Assyrian armies marched into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and destroyed it. The Assyrians removed virtually all of the 10 Israelite tribes and replaced them with people from tribes which they had previously conquered. Those 10 removed Israelite tribes constitute “The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel” whose whereabouts today, if they still exist, are unknown.

There remains today, by DNA confirmation, a small segment of 750 Israelites from the Northern kingdom of Israel who are descendants of those not removed by Assyrians and who identify themselves as Samaritans.

Those Israelites who remained in the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah were able to successfully survive defeat by the Babylonians, conquest by the Persians, subjugation to the Greeks and the Romans and 2000 perilous years of diaspora, wandering from nation to nation. Those Israelites are identified as Jews because they stem from the three southern Israelite tribes of the Kingdom of Judah, to wit: Judah, Benjamin, and Simon. In addition to those tribes, there were several priests from the tribe of Levi who served in the temple in Jerusalem.

The essential elements of Jewish identity

To be a Jew, a person must be a direct lineal descendant of the patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. By definition, this excludes the possibility of inclusion by conversion. Conversion, in any form, is never mentioned or authorized in the Written Torah. Indeed, there is no formula for conversion that can alter the genetic identity of an individual in order to qualify him a lineal descendent of the patriarchs.

A male lineal descendent of the patriarchs must be circumcised on the eighth day.

Genetic lineage from the patriarchs must be provided by means of transmission through semen ( Zerah). While this requirement may appear both unusual and puzzling, its logic has been confirmed by modern science:

Males have two sex chromosomes: a Y (male) chromosome (which the male received from his father) and an X chromosome (which the male received from his mother. Females, on the other hand, receive two X (female) chromosomes, one from each parent.

If the Jewish male delivers an X chromosome, the resultant female child inherits X chromosomes from both her mother and her father.

If, at the time of mating, the Jewish male delivers a Y chromosome, the resultant male child inherits that Y chromosome and its genes from the father and a separate X chromosome and its genes from the mother. As long as there is a continuum from Jewish fathers, the chain from the patriarchs remains unbroken. The introduction into the line of a Y chromosome from a Gentile male would abort the lineal continuity of the Y chromosome and its genes from the patriarchs.

Because women are not a source of Y chromosomes, a Jewish mother and a Gentile father would not be capable of delivering the seminal continuity from the patriarchs required for a Jewish child.

The scientific elements of the procreation system were only identified as recently as 1903 by a brilliant scientist, Nettie M. Stevens of Bryn Mawr College. It is equally important to note that the process regarding the X and Y of genetics, which gave rise to patrilineal-ism, evolved long before human life began. Accordingly, the occasionally expressed notion that patrilineal-ism is a cabal in support of male domination, is “ill conceived.”

The Torah was very careful to avoid adventurous or imaginative ways to get around or avoid its laws or design. In Deuteronomy 4(2), God directs that “you shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall you diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I command you.”

Who Are the Ashkenazis?

Who are the Ashkenazis? Where did they come from? When did they appear on the European continent?  Most writers seem to avoid a specific time or era as to when the Ashkenazis arrived on the scene. History begins to take note of the footsteps of the Ashkenazis in the early 500s A.D.

The Ashkenazi name alone seems to generate more confusion than enlightenment with regard to its origin. The conventional wisdom, which is informed by the Ashkenazi practice of the Jewish faith, appears to suggest that they originated from remnants of the Southern Israelite Kingdom of Judah, who were thrust into Europe as slaves and servants by the Roman legions.

That episode began in 132 CE with an insurrection against Roman domination brought by a zealot, Simon bar Kokhba, who was joined by the noted Rabbi Akiva. The final Roman act that ignited the flames of revolution was the Roman plan to construct a Roman city over the ruins of Jerusalem, and the erection of a temple to Jupiter on the Temple Mount.

The Judeans fought valiantly and caused the Romans to bring into Judah seven full legions to quell the uprising. 580,000 Jews were killed. Fifty fortified towns and 985 villages were razed. The Romans suffered massive military casualties as well. The last battle of the war in 135 CE occurred at the fortress of Betar. The Jerusalem Talmud relates that the number of dead in Betar was enormous, and that the Romans went on killing “until their horses were submerged in blood up to their nostrils.”

After the war ended, the Roman forces went on a rampage of systematic killing, which included Rabbi Akiva and 10 other Rabbinical martyrs. Following the war, many more were killed, exiled or sold into slavery. There were so many captives auctioned at “Hadrian’s market” that it was reported that the price of a Jew was as low as the price of a horse.

When the insurrection was put down by the Romans, Hadrian, the Roman leader, sought to root out Jewish nationalism by prohibiting Torah law and the Hebrew calendar, and by executing Judaic scholars.

These tragic events were to change the course of Jewish history for centuries to come. As a result of the loss of the Bar Kokhba insurrection, the surviving Jewish community fled in many directions to avoid death or enslavement at the hands of the Romans. Jewish slaves and their children who eventually gained their freedom migrated out of Judah and settled in southern Europe. Not infrequently, the expatriates, set adrift in a Gentile world, were obliged to find mates amongst the indigenous European population.

With the destruction of the Second Temple and the failed revolt against the Romans in 135 CE, the Jewish passion for a relationship with their God did not end. From 125 CE to 550 CE, Rabbinical Scholars in Judah and Babylon developed new forms of Jewish law and worship that could serve in the absence of the Temple. Eventually, the European Jewish expatriates, including itinerant Judean merchants and tradesmen, coalesced into a group that was dubbed Ashkenazi.

 In 465 CE, Ashkenazi communities were identified in Brittany; in 524 CE, in Valence; and in 533 CE, in Orleans.  Later, for economic opportunities, during the early Middle Ages, they moved on to the Rhine River in Germany and to northern France. Stability, however, was difficult to maintain. French residence for Jews ended abruptly in 629 CE, when the King Dagobert I, on the Frank throne, expelled the Jews from his kingdom. However, by 800 CE, Charlemagne expanded the Frankish Empire and brought on a brief period of stability and unity.

Jews in the former Roman territories confronted harsh anti-Jewish church rulings. Some Jews, to stop the pain, assimilated into dominant Greek and Latin cultures by way of conversion to Christianity.

It is estimated that prior to 1096 CE, the first Crusade, the entire Jewish population of Germany comprised only 20,000 people. However, by that time, numerous massacres of Jews were occurring during the first Christian Crusades. Mobs in France and Germany perpetrated the Rhineland massacres of 1096 CE, devastating Jewish communities along the Rhine River.

England in 1290, France in 1394, and parts of Germany in the 15^th Century gradually pushed Ashkenazi Jews eastward to Poland, Lithuania and Russia. By the 15^th Century, the Ashkenazi Jewish community of Poland became the largest Jewish community in the diaspora. Ultimately that community fell under the domination of Russia, but remained the center of Ashkenazi Jewry until the Holocaust.

There was little assimilation amongst the Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. They lived almost exclusively in shtetls. Jewish education was provided for males, and the communities were under strict Rabbinical leadership. Intermarriage was strongly discouraged by both Jews and Gentiles

Daniel Elazar, of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, summarizes Ashkenazi history in the last 3000 years by noting that at the end of the 11^th Century, 97% of world Jewry was Sephardic and 3% was Ashkenazi. By the middle of the 17^th Century, Sephardim outnumbered Ashkenazim 3 to 2. By the end of the 18^th Century, Ashkenazim outnumbered Sephardim 3 to 2. By 1930, however, it was estimated that Ashkenazi Jews accounted for nearly 92% of world Jewry.

The Turkic Connection – A Different View of Ashkenazi Origin

In recent years, innovative technology, cumulative skills and new and distinct ideas have developed with reference to the origin of the Ashkenazi community.

In March 2016, Dr. Eran Elhaik, together with Ranajit Das, Paul Wexler and Mehdi Pirooznia published on the internet the results of their investigation of the origin of the Ashkenazis. It appears under the title “Localizing Ashkenazic Jews to Primeval Villages in the Ancient Iranian Lands of Ashkenaz.”

Dr.Elhaik and his associates used a computer modeling system to convert Ashkenazi DNA into geographical information which revealed that Ashkenazis descended from the Greeks, Iranians and others who colonized northern Anatolia (now northern Turkey) more than 2000 years ago, before converting to Judaism. He points to three still-surviving Turkish villages: Iskenaz, Eskenaz, and Ashanaz, located in North Eastern Turkey, which made up part of the original Ashkenazi homeland. Dr.Elhaik concludes that Ashkenazis originated during the First Millennium when Iranian Jews Judaised (converted) Greco-Roman, Turk, Iranian, southern Caucuses, and Slavic populations inhabiting the lands of Ashkenaz in Turkey.

Even if true, without patrilineal lineage, which the Torah requires of the Jew, Ashkenazis from that source could not possibly be deemed as Jews. They would have been born as genetic Gentiles. No process of conversion then, or now, could make them Jews. By the way, the same is true of the Turkic Khazars whose descendants are occasionally proposed as the source of the Ashkenazi Jews.

Several prominent scholars with significant and authoritative credentials have declared Dr.Elhaik’s conclusions to be without merit. That, of course, in and of itself, does not foreclose the possibility of Dr. Elhaik’s hypothesis regarding the origin of the Ashkenazis.

Some unique aspects of Ashkenazi culture:

Language: Until recently, in addition to the language of the country of their residence, Ashkenazis spoke Yiddish. The world appears to have discovered the Ashkenazis while they were resident in lands connecting both Germany and France. It is therefore no strange thing that the Yiddish language, occasionally referred to as “Judeo-German,” should have its birthplace in that locale. In its various forms, Yiddish is a composite of high German fused with elements of the Hebrew and eventually parts of Slavic languages.

As the Ashkenazi community moved eastward into Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia, the need for a common language amongst the Ashkenazis grew. For them, Yiddish became a kind of Ashkenazi Esperanto, binding together a people of common background, interest and faith. Eventually, Yiddish became so pervasive amongst the Ashkenazis that it became the independent source and embodiment of their culture, known as “Yiddishkeit.” Books about their lives, poetry, plays, and musical lyrics, were all written and performed in Yiddish. Formal prayer, however, remained the province of Hebrew, which was considered a sacred tongue.

As the Ashkenazis expanded into other continents, i.e., the Americas, Australia, and South Africa, the utilization of Yiddish started to decline. The major blow to the Yiddish language occurred through the Nazi extermination of 6 million persons, most of whom were Ashkenazis and Yiddish speakers. Today, based upon an estimate by Rutgers University, there are approximately 600,000 Yiddish speakers in the entire world, a large contingent of which is found amongst Haredi (orthodox) Jews.

Religion: Ashkenazis who are neither atheists, agnostics, nor indifferent about religious faith are most likely practitioners of the Jewish religion. For the vast majority of such persons, the Jewish religion functions through the organs of Rabbinical Judaism. That is, Rabbis of different denominations serve as teachers, interpreters and supervisory religious authorities over the Judaic laws approved by them. Rabbis are not, as in some other religions, intercessors between God and members of their congregation.

There are, however, sects of Judaism, such as the Karites and the Samaritans, that do not subscribe to Rabbinical control and construction of the written Torah. Their members are nowise bound to the Talmud or Rabbinical interpretations of the Torah.

The fact that most Ashkenazis of faith practice Rabbinical Judaism a.k.a. Rabbinism does not make them Jews. To be a Jew, and thus part of the Israelite Nation, one has to have been born a Jew. It is a matter of genetics and not a matter of belief or religious practice. From the time of Abraham, approximately 2000 BCE, until the Torah was orally presented by God to Moses and the Israelite People at Mount Sinai in 1285 BCE, a period of 715 years, no Jewish religion or faith existed. The God of Israel was simply a tribal god of the people of Israel whose orders needed to be obeyed in order to survive and grow. That period could well be extended for an additional 700 years until Ezra the Scribe brought the Masoretic text of the Torah to the Second Temple.

The word “Jews” refers to people, human beings. The Jewish religion is a compilation of moral beliefs, religious practices and obedience to a deity. They are not one and the same. If a person is born a Jew, that person’s genetics does not change if he or she should decide to become an atheist or to observe a religion other than Judaism. If that does occur, that person need not convert back to Judaism because he or she never lost his or her Jewish genetic identity. Conversely, if a person who is not born of Jewish parents decides on pursuing the Jewish faith, that does not make him a Jew.

In some quarters there is the idea that a Gentile male can become a Jew simply by becoming circumcised. Indeed, you could circumcise an elephant, but that does not make him a Jewish elephant, although, it would undoubtedly make him a bit angry.

While a Gentile can, as an act of conviction, dedication, or relationship, convert to practice the Jewish faith or religion, a person can never convert to being a Jew. Such a male can never be the source of Jewish children.  Similarly, a person can convert to the Muslim faith without being an Arab or a Turk. An individual becomes a Jew when conceived by persons authorized by the Torah to transmit that heritage to their issue. Neither learning the history and rules of a faith that they wish to adopt, nor immersion in a mikvah, nor the receipt of blessings by a representative of that faith, can alter one’s genetics so as to fabricate or create a Jew. Converting a Gentile to a Jew, is little more than Rabbinical theater, in which each denomination features the same fictional play, adjusted only by the cast and the credo of their movement.

It is important to be mindful that the process of conversion appears nowhere in the Torah. However, the Torah does encourage the presence of non-Jews whose souls seek identity with the God of Israel or the people of Israel. Those are persons whom the Torah identifies as “Gers,” and whose rights and privileges are exquisitely protected by the Torah itself. There are close to 50 references to the word “Ger” in the Torah, a circumstance which would not likely occur in the event that one could easily transition into being a Jew.

Unique Characteristics of the Ashkenazis: As previously noted, of the 14.7 million Jews in the world today, 80% claim Ashkenazi origin. The remaining Jews are identified as Sephardic (originating from Iberian Jewish lineage) and Mizrahim (Middle Eastern Jews).  There is a perceptible, but nominal, difference in the coloration between those who claim Ashkenazi origin and those who are Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jews. Ashkenazis tend to be modestly lighter in skin and hair coloring.                                                                                      

A significant difference, however, appears in those diseases that uniquely impact the Ashkenazis. 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 an apparent difference in the Ashkenazi genetic profile and history from those of the rest of the Jewish community.

Additionally, “Among women of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, about 11% of all breast cancers are caused by one of only three BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. These three mode mutations are called founder mutations, because they are ancient mutations in the Ashkenazi Jewish world, so were “founded” in that community and thus appear in many modern Ashkenazi Jewish families.” (Breast Cancer Research Foundation).

Scientific confirmation of the uniqueness of Ashkenazi genetic origin

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 from mixed European and Middle Eastern origin.

Professor Martin Richards, 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 mitrochondrial (mt) origins are most closely related to Southern and Western European lineages. He estimated that between 65% to 81% of Ashkenazi Mt-DNA is European in origin, including all four founding mothers, and that most of the remaining lineages are also European.             

Harry Oster, Professor of pathology, genetics and pediatrics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Director of genetic testing at Montefiore Medical Center in 2014, published the results of his research suggesting that today’s Ashkenazi Jews are descended from 350 individuals mixed between European and Middle Eastern ancestry.

Antonio Torroni, a geneticist at the University of Pavia in Italy and a leading expert in the genetics of Europeans, reported that recent studies of DNA from the cell nucleus have shown “a very close similarity between Ashkenazi Jews and Italians.”                                                                                                                             

The Bottom Line…Are Ashkenazis Jews?

The elements and considerations that compel a conclusion:

1. By far, Rabbinical Judaism is the most dominant force in the Jewish world today. With the exception of the small populations of Karites and Samaritans, virtually all of the remaining communities that practice Jewish faith identify with it, and fall within its orbit.

2. During the entire Biblical era, and beyond, for more than 2000 years, Israelites and Jews conducted themselves as a patrilineal society in accordance with the structures prescribed in the Written Torah.

3. In the latter part of the Second Century CE, early Rabbinical Jews, under the auspices of the Tannaim of the Mishna, rejected and abandoned patrilineal-ism and substituted matrilineal-ism as the code for determining who was a Jew. Matrilineal-ism effectively provided that if a child were born of a Jewish mother and a Gentile father, that child was a Jew. Conversely, if a child was born of a Jewish father and a Gentile mother, that child was not a Jew.

4. There is an entire panoply of illnesses and physical disorders that identify with persons of Ashkenazi extraction and that do not relate to Sephardic or Mizrahim (Middle Eastern) Jews. Such a difference reasonably and logically compels the notion of a unique and different genetic origin.

5. Geneticists in Israel, England and the United States have identified that a significant part of the Ashkenazi population is matrilineally descendent from European women. The estimates range from “mixed origin” to “between 65% and 81%.”.

6. Although the genetics of a child are fixed at the moment of conception, some Rabbis declare, or strongly imply, that a conversion, properly performed, can actually change a Gentile into a Jew. Alternatively, a phrase is used to suggest that the convert is now “Jewish.” That phrase appears to run the gamut between suggesting that the convert is now a “philo-Jew”, committed to live a Jewish-style life, and actually is a Jew.

7. Rabbinical Judaism’s matrilineal policy was and is already stumbling from having retroactively rendered as Gentile the children of biblical mothers who were not born Jewish: 1) four of Jacob’s sons, Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher, children of his concubines; 2) the children of Joseph with his Egyptian wife, Asenath; 3) Manasseh and Ephraim, the children of Moses with his Midianite wife Zipporah; 4) all of the  children of King Solomon from his many concubines and foreign wives including his successor son, Rehoboam; and a host of many others.

8. Even more damaging today, when more than 50% of Jewish men are intermarrying with Gentile women, is Rabbinical Judaism’s resorting to the sham of genetically ineffective spousal conversions in order to pretend that the Gentile mother is now a Jew and thus can qualify her children as Jews under Rabbinical law. If there is a harsh truth here, it lies at the feet of the Tannaim, and those who follow them blindly, and are too anxious to abandon the patrilineal-ism of the Written Torah in favor of religious adventurism.

9. Ashkenazis constitute 80% of the Jewish community. How does one respond to those who contest the right of Jews to their homeland in Israel when they learn that a very large part of the people we identify as Jews do not legally qualify as Jews under the laws of Rabbinical Judaism?

Analysis and reflection

The current Masoretic text of the Torah was delivered to the Second Temple on or about 450 BCE. It described, in multiple places, how the Israelite people would regenerate themselves by continuing to follow the seminal line of the patriarchs. It was both a simple and an understandable formula.

Approximately 750 years later, on or about 250 CE, the Tannaim (the early Rabbis of the Talmud) decided to reject the patrilineal formula of the Torah and to substitute matrilineal-ism in its stead. However, since the Torah requires seminal transport of “Zerah,” semen, and women cannot provide semen, the system will not work with matrilineal-ism. In fact, under matrilineal-ism, with each new Gentile male who fathers a child with a Jewish woman, it changes the identity of the Israelite people. In that case, the confusion of Israelite identity gets more expansive with each successive generation following that union.

Given the fact that a period of 1800 years has expired since the Rabbinical alteration of the biblical system, one would expect that the identity of the Jewish people would be corrupted beyond the recognition.

However, in one of the great ironies of history, the identity of the Jewish people was preserved by the very poison that sought to destroy it, i.e., “anti-Semitism.” It was anti-Semitism which forbade Christians from marrying Jews and consigned the Jewish community to the ghettos and shtetls of Europe. The Jewish reaction to that anti-Semitism was to cluster close within their communities and to make intermarriage both an anathema and an abandonment of community and family responsibility. So strong was the Jewish response to intermarriage that when, on the rare occasion that it occurred, the family would enter into mourning, as if their child had died.

With the exception of a brief period following the liberalizing effect of the Napoleonic wars, intermarriage did not become a problem until the post-World War II era. Now, during our lifetime, the rate of intermarriage exceeds 50% of all American Jews who marry. Nevertheless, many Jewish men who marry Gentile women want their children to be Jews. That, however, cannot take place under the current matrilineal status of rabbinical law. Instead of acknowledging the problem, and returning to biblical patrilineality, which would have rendered those children Jews, the rabbis sought a different solution. They have chosen to compound the error by suggesting that genetically ineffective spousal conversions can change a Gentile wife into a Jew and thus capable of breeding Jewish children under rabbinism’s matrilineal standard.

Truly, after 1800 years, one can understand Rabbinism’s disinclination to eliminate matrilineal-ism, one of the essential elements of its faith system. However, errors, and false premises do not improve with age. If it were so, the arks of our temples would house an array of golden calves.

It is in this environment that we examine the place of the Ashkenazi community within Rabbinical Judaism. Beginning with the science of the 21^st century, it has become progressively clear that the Ashkenazi community resulted from Jewish males who found themselves in the Roman Empire after the destruction of the Second Temple in Israel and the beginning of the Diaspora a number of them married indigenous European females, but continued to maintain their identity as Jews.

Under biblical law, though not encouraged, intermarriage would not have created a major problem. However, Rabbinism’s rejection of patrilineal-ism in favor of matrilineal-ism is a serious problem in that it can result in total confusion of Judaic identity.

Currently, 80% of the 14.7 million Jews amounts to an Ashkenazi community of 11,760,000 persons. Scientific investigation has established that the Ashkenazi Jewish community originated from a significant number of indigenous European women. The estimates went from 40% of all Ashkenazis stemming from an unquantified intermix of European and Middle Eastern founding mothers to somewhere between 65% to 81% of all Ashkenazi’s originating from founding European mothers. Rabbinical Judaism cannot dance at two weddings at the same time. If, under matrilineal-ism, Gentile mothers breed Gentile children, how can Ashkenazis born of Gentile European founding mothers be Jewish?

Which of us, who claim Ashkenazi identity, are really Jews under rabbinical law? Are our rabbis and cantors Jews? How do we know whether our children are marrying Jews or Gentiles? If we are married by a rabbi who himself may not be Jew, are we really married? Is the Torah in our sanctuary kosher if the Ashkenazi scribe (sofer) is not a Jew under rabbinical law? If we are not Jews, under rabbinical law, what are we?

Since Rabbinical Judaism has adopted an aberrant form of Jewish identity, it behooves the Rabbis to identify those of us who are, and who are not, Jews by its matrilineal standards.

In truth and in fact, Rabbinical Judaism’s matrilineal-ism cannot coexist with the Jewish community composed principally of Ashkenazis. The Jewish world is, however, favored by the fact that matrilineal-ism, though conceived many years ago, has only really come into play during our lifetime, and we still have the opportunity to abandon it before it fully sows its pernicious seeds into the soil of Jewish identity.

Conclusion

The Jewish community owes respect and dignity to our sages of old, who helped to fashion our enduring faith. However, the God that freed us from bondage did not free us from the obligation to use our minds in support of our free and honest will. Slavish obligation to an ancient idea, which is patently erroneous and destructive, does not honor our history, but it will destroy our future. Men are constructed differently from women and one cannot always be substituted for the other. Neither men nor women selected their role in the creation of successive generations, and neither men,nor women can alter it, even in the service of sexual parity.

Rabbinical Judaism (Rabbinism) is the acknowledged representative of Normative Judaism and bears a strong responsibility for the religious welfare of the Jewish community. Millions of Ashkenazis have for centuries believed that they were Jews, and have now learned that Rabbinism’s matrilineal-ism was a total bar to that status.

If Rabbinical Judaism continues to sponsor the aberrant rule of matrilineal-ism, with each new generation it will geometrically broaden the confusion of who really is a Jew. The Rabbinate must act quickly and decisively to abandon matrilineal-ism, lest we become a mongrel people, bereft of our history and of our God, and ultimately consigned to the refuse dump of forgotten civilizations.

Douglas Kaplan