Intermarriage
The miracle of 4000 years of Jewish survival is legend. Virtually half of that existence occurred as a landless people escaping anti-Semitism by traveling from host nation to host nation while still retaining Jewish identity and faith. Ironically, one of the greatest challenges to Jewish existence occurred when the Jewish law of inclusion was changed to encompass only children born of Jewish mothers, regardless of the religion of the father.
Prior to the construction of the second Temple (Circa 450 BCE), the wives of Jewish males, from whatsoever origin, sojourned with their families within the Jewish community and they and their children were simply accepted as part of that community. Intermarriage was quite frequent in the early Israelite society. The practice was well reflected in the story of Ruth, a Moabite woman. On the death of her Jewish husband, she pledged to her mother-in-law Naomi that, “wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you live, I will live. Your people shall be my people and your God will be my God.” The Scriptures do not describe a formal conversion of Ruth because undoubtedly there was no formal conversion ceremony nor did any rabbis then exist to perform it. King David, Ruth’s great-grandson, is a testament to the inclusion of Ruth and her descendents into the covenant of Israel.
The Blessed Seed of the Patriarchs
Four of the twelve tribes of Israel (Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher) resulted from Jacob’s relationships with Zilpah and Billah, the servant women of his wives Leah and Rachel. Joseph was married to Asenath, an Egyptian woman, who the Pharaoh gave to him as a wife. Kings Saul, David, Solomon and successor monarchs married many foreign wives, often the result of international agreements. Moses was married to a Midianite woman. No one would suggest that their progeny were not part of the Hebrew nation. What all of the children of these mixed marriages had in common was that they were conceived with the blessed seed of the patriarchs.
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:
- 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.”
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- In all biblical references in which the word seed is used the Bible employs the word “ZERAH” which, even today, is translated as semen.
All of the described biblical conversations between God and the patriarchs expressly included reference to the seed of the patriarchs. It is as if the patriarch’s seed were an essential party to the prediction that Israel would become a great nation and to God’s covenant granting the land of Canaan to Israel. None of the predictions or covenants were addressed to the matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca, Leah or Rachel or to the fruit of their womb.
Prohibited Relationships
Supporters of Matriarchal Judaism point to Deuteronomy 7(1-4), which names seven Canaanite tribes with which Jewish men and women cannot marry. In Deuteronomy 7(4), the Scripture explained that the purpose of this provision was, “for they will turn away thy son from following me that they may serve other gods.” Two thoughts naturally proceed from the express language of that provision:
- Although it is a prohibited relationship, God treats the issue of a Jewish man and a female from one of the prohibited tribes as belonging to his people of Israel. Why else would God be concerned with the mother talking the child into other gods and religions?
- No mention is made concerning possible religious redirection of the daughter from such a prohibited union, presumptively because the daughter does not pass on the blessed seed of the patriarchs.
Some resources have expanded this provision to mean that Jewish men and women cannot marry outside of the Jewish community. Yet, ironically, traditional Judaism today confirms that the issue of a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father is born into the Jewish community.
The express directions of God in the Torah have never been circumspect. God specifically describes those animals which are prohibited to be consumed by the Hebrew nation (Leviticus 11(3-8) and Deuteronomy 14(4-8)). In a similar vein, God specifically identifies how the holiday of Passover should be observed (Exodus 12). In God’s infinite wisdom, he recognizes the editorial nature of his creations and enjoins his people, “ye 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” (Deuteronomy 4(2)).
In Deuteronomy 7(1), God actually names the seven specific local tribes that Jews are prohibited to marry into: Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites.
To expand the list of the seven tribes to all persons of non-Jewish extraction would:
- Suggest that God went to a lot of trouble to name all seven tribes when he really intended to prohibit marriage to anyone outside of the Jewish community.
- Violate God’s injunction to the Jewish people not to add to his directives.
- Conflict with traditional Judaism’s acceptance of children born from a relationship between a Jewish mother and a non-Jewish father.
Rabbinical Challenge to Divine Authority
In all of the Tanach (compendium of Torah and Books of Prophets and Scribes), the identity of each individual is established through the name of his or her father. This is especially true in regard to the thousands of persons named in the book of Ezra, the Scribe where lineage is traced through the male parent. Yet, in one of the great ironies of Jewish history, a sea change appears to take place when Ezra arrives from Babylonia to the construction site of the second Temple in Jerusalem. Many of the Jews in that community have fathered children with women of the indigenous tribes which were those expressly prohibited in Deuteronomy 7(1).
Ezra was so distressed by what he saw that he prayed, wept and cast himself down. In crisis mode, he appropriately demanded that those unions espoused to women of the prohibited tribes be set aside, but then erroneously went one step too far. He demanded that the issue of these relationships, children born of the blessed seed of the patriarchs, be abandoned to their mothers and rejected from acceptance as Jewish children. In doing this, Ezra brings into fruition God’s expressed concern in Deuteronomy 7(4) that these children will be turned away from God and will serve other gods.
There appears little doubt that Ezra’s erroneous decision was buoyed by the rationale that you can identify the mother of a child but not the father. That unauthorized rationalization, if it had any merit, long ago disappeared with the science of DNA. Ezra’s decision and its subsequent acceptance by the authors of the Talmud effectively abandoned the seed of the patriarchs as the instrumentality for the continuum of the Jewish people. As the Jewish female was presumed to produce a Jewish child, a Jewish male could only breed a Jewish child when in union with a Jewish female. The seed of the patriarchs was held for naught.
Who had the authority to change God’s directive that the people of Israel would be forthcoming only from the seed of the patriarchs? Who had the authority to change the source of the Jewish people from the seed of the patriarchs to the ovum of Jewish women? Was there some Divine directive wherein God directed the sages of the Talmud to change his early plans for the development of the Jewish people so that they would be generated from a different source? It is interesting to note that the Sadducees and their presumptive successor the Karites, whose interpretation of the Torah differed from the Pharisees\ Rabbis, declined to abandon the seed of the patriarchs as the source of Jewish children.
The Y Chromosome and the Seed of the Patriarchs
Although many biblical Jews were engaged in animal husbandry, they lacked the knowledge of modern geneticists. They had no special awareness about how genetic traits were passed down through the generations. It was not until 1905 when Nettie Stevens of Bryn Mawr College and Edmund Beecher Wilson independently discovered the mechanisms of the unique Y chromosome. All normal males have both an X chromosome and a Y chromosome while all females have two X chromosomes. The work of these two scientists and subsequent contributions by other geneticists proved that the Y chromosome established the male sex of a child and passed its genes unaltered from father to son.
Given these facts, one has to wonder how the early Jewish community knew and understood that the priesthood, the Kohens, (which stemmed from Aaron’s lineal descendents) could only descend from father to son. The uniqueness of the Jewish nation originated with the Creator’s inclusion of the Y chromosome’s unchanged path from father to son as part of the design of the human species. By providing in Genesis 12:7, 17:6 – 8, 17:10 – 12, 26:2 – 4 and 28:14, that the seed of the patriarchs, which incorporated the Y chromosome, was the root stock of the people of Israel, God assured that the integrity of his people, would remain pure and un-diluted.
The Benevolent Autocracy of the Creator
In every structured society, the governing rules of conduct are established either by man or law. Where they are created and enforced by man, such as a monarchy or an oligarchy, the laws are subject to change on the whim of the king or oligarch. Where the rules governing the society stem from a written instrument, such as a constitution, the instrument remains the paramount and exclusive source of authority in that society. Customarily, such instruments provide for the manner in which they can be amended. However, the rules are different in a religious community, where the basic document contains the direct or transcribed word of the Creator. The Torah can only be amended by God, its source, and not by man. Man may, however, make rules and regulations in concert with the express provisions of the instrument but not inconsistent with it.
In Genesis, the patriarchs are told that God’s covenant is with them and their seed. Meaning no disrespect, the covenant is not with the matriarchs or with the fruit of their womb. The Torah advises that it is through the patriarch’s seed that Israel will become a great nation and it is with that seed that God has covenanted to deliver the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession.
Who then had the authority to decree that Jewish women, through whom that holy seed could not pass, were the exclusive instrumentality for the origin of Jewish children? Today, the child of a righteous Jewish husband with a non-Jewish mate is not Jewish, but the child of an atheist Jewish woman fathered by a gentile Holocaust denier is Jewish. Not all of the brilliant scholars of the Mishna, Gomorrah, Gaonim, Rashi or Maimonides have the authority to change God’s covenant with the patriarchs and their seed or to alter the physiological path through which membership in the Jewish people is delivered.
Conclusion
For the last seven decades, we have maintained to the world our just entitlement to the land of Israel. That right is largely based upon God’s biblical covenant with our patriarchs and their seed. For 2000 years, we have wrongfully rejected that seed as the avenue for the continuity of our people. What terrible damage has been done to the authority of our entitlement to the land?
Over the last 2000 years (except in modern reform and liberal congregations), hundreds of thousands of Jewish children and their successor generations have been wrongfully denied access to their own people. Every time a child is born to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother and is denied entry into the Jewish community a gross injustice has been done. It is a wrong that demands prompt remediation.
The erroneous matrilineal path is deeply rooted in traditional Judaism and thus therein lies the affirmative obligation for correction. Before we, as Jews, can undertake the repair of the world (Tikkum Olam), we must first have the courage to repair ourselves. Tradition, which is seeped in thousands of years of erroneous misdirection, is not justification for the denial of birthright into the People of Israel.
In the correction of this wrong, may the wisdom of the patriarchs lead us to a path where we promptly return to the ample blessings of God’s covenant.
By Douglas C. Kaplan