| rdfs:comment | - The Mishnah (Kiddushin 3:12) states that, to be a Jew, one must be either the child of a Jewish mother or a convert to Judaism, (ger tzedek, "righteous convert"). The Talmud (Kiddushin 68b) derives this law from the Torah, specifically Deuteronomy 7:3-4: "Thy daughter thou shalt not give to his son, nor shalt thou take his daughter to thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods." This rule was clearly accepted by the 2nd century CE, with virtually no debate over it appearing in the Talmud. Orthodox opinion regards this rule as dating from receipt of the Torah at Mount Sinai, but most non-Orthodox scholars regard it as originating either at the time of Ezra (4th Century BCE) or during the period of Roman rule in the 1st-2nd centuries CE.
|
| abstract | - The Mishnah (Kiddushin 3:12) states that, to be a Jew, one must be either the child of a Jewish mother or a convert to Judaism, (ger tzedek, "righteous convert"). The Talmud (Kiddushin 68b) derives this law from the Torah, specifically Deuteronomy 7:3-4: "Thy daughter thou shalt not give to his son, nor shalt thou take his daughter to thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods." This rule was clearly accepted by the 2nd century CE, with virtually no debate over it appearing in the Talmud. Orthodox opinion regards this rule as dating from receipt of the Torah at Mount Sinai, but most non-Orthodox scholars regard it as originating either at the time of Ezra (4th Century BCE) or during the period of Roman rule in the 1st-2nd centuries CE. In the Hellenistic period of the 4th Century BCE–1st Century CE some evidence indicates that the offspring of intermarriages between Jewish men and non-Jewish women were considered Jewish; as is usual in prerabbinic texts, there is no mention of conversion on the part of the Gentile spouse. On the other hand, Philo of Alexandria calls the child of a Jew and a non-Jew a nothos (bastard), regardless of whether the non-Jewish parent is the father or the mother . With the emergence of Jewish denominations and the modern rise in Jewish intermarriage in the 20th century, questions about the law of matrilineal descent have assumed greater importance to the Jewish community at large. The heterogeneous Jewish community is divided on the issue of "Who is a Jew?" via descent; matrilineal descent still is the rule within Orthodox Judaism, which also holds that anyone with a Jewish mother has an irrevocable Jewish status, and matrilineal descent is the norm in the Conservative movement. Since 1983, Reform Judaism in the United States of America officially adopted a bilineal policy: one is a Jew if either of one's parents is Jewish, provided that either (a) one is raised as a Jew, by Reform standards, or (b) one engages in an appropriate act of public identification, formalizing a practice that had been common in Reform synagogues for at least a generation. Karaite Judaism, which includes only the Tanakh in its canon, interprets the Torah to indicate that Jewishness passes exclusively through the father's line, maintaining the system of patrilineality that many scholars believe was the practice of ancient Israel.
|
