Jewish Patrilinealism: What do you think- A Good Rebuttal of Criticism?

Even if we wanted to change (or extend) it, we can't without a Sanhedrin. Keep this idea for when the time is right, hopefully soon.

Eddie - just our of curiosity - how do reforms do Kippur?

Did you want an intelectual criticism or for someone to stroke the ego?

> Some get pissed at these articles because they defy the orthodox norm

Actualy - the articles presented an alleged Halakhic discussion -- and your postings were requests for comment -- so the answers to your request criticised the shortfalls in Halakhic and ethnographic underpinnings of the articles.

> with Jewish intermarriage hovering around 50% and 90% of Jews being non-observant...

1) Your statistics are from?

2) There is nothing new under the sun.

" I will scatter the house of Israel among all the nations; as it is shaken in a sieve, and not a coarse particle falls to the earth." (Amos 9:9)

The assumption of the prophets long before the exile began was that people will assymilate.

Amos said that was precisely part of the point of the exile.

Shall those who want to assymilate be dragged kicking and screaming back into the Jewish house?

Or shall we go begging on our knees "please come back" - forsaking cultural and religious standards for the sake of "satisfying what the eye wants" ?

There are many very substantial Kiruv efforts --

quite a massive "welcome mat" is out.

But why should should the desire for welcome undercut the household?

2) Finaly - with respect to redefining birth lineage -- what is your point?

Should we drag the non-Jewish children kicking and screaming and tell them that they are obligated under the covenant of Sinai to do things they are not obligated to?

Or are you saying that the obligations of the covenant should be trashed altogether?

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All in all --

I realy don't understand how in this day and age of equality, so-called reformers want to pull Judaism into the dark ages of Patriarchism.

Lets face it --

In most cultures, they were quite content to take a woman, rape her, claim her child, then kick her into the street.

Judaism invented a requirement for consent to marriage by the woman,

Judaism invented divorce with compensation for the woman,

Finaly -- in this issue -- Judaism gave the woman the right to chose whether to enter into the Jewish covenant, and to determine the initial choice for the child of her body.

Women had nothing close in American law until the 1970ies, and in many countries in the world, they still don't.

Why you want to undercut women like that?

Today, by Jewish law, the child of a non-Jewish woman is free to chose for him-her self if he wants to enter the Jewish people. Why is there such a drive to force this kid into something he is not interested in?

He answers what he can make up answers for and ignores what he can't answer. Heh, he truly is desperate to be seen as a scholar but is totally clueless. So lets just repeat the criticism that he deserves!

The author of the article is completely clueless and tries to use English principles to understand Hebrew text! Here is one laughable example:

"The common Rabbinic interpretation of this is that the prohibition in the Torah contains the ambiguous lower-case "he" who is the object of the verb "turn." "

Really? Lower case "he"? There is no upper or lower case in Hebrew- trying to create a "lower case he" which he calls ambiguous is a pure fiction invented by him to try and justify his attack on halachah. Further more, he ignore many previous examples in the Torah that illustrate matrilineal descent determines Judaism while patrilineal descent determines tribal identity. Aside from the passage in Devarim he discusses where else do we see matrilineal descent being the determinant?

Try Avraham- the very first Jew! Where do we see it with Avraham? Well lets look at Avraham's marriage history and children from them:

His first son, Ishmael, is from Hagar. Ishmael is NOT considered Jewish since Hagar never adopted Avraham's religion. If patrilineal descent applied Ishmael would have been considered Jewish.

His second son, Yotzchak, From Sarah IS considered Jewish since Sarah fully embraced the same beliefs as Avraham

Avrahams 3-8th children were Zimran, Jokshan, Medan, Midian and Shuah from Keturah. She never adopted Avraham's beliefs fully and these children were sent away as not being Jewish. If it went by patrilineal descent then all of them would have been Jewish!

We see it in the children of Yitzchak also. Esav and Ya'akov both have the same parents and thus both would be considered Jewish. But Esav married women that were idol worshippers and thus none of his children were considered Jewish. If it went by patrilineal descent then all of them should have been considered Jewish!

He also tries to discount all the traditional understandings of Ezra to try and force his view onto the Tanakh. The reality is that for millenia Jews have had the same understanding of Ezra- the men sent away their non-Jewish wives and their non-Jewish children. If patrilineal descent applied, then the children would have been considered Jewish regardless of the religion of the mothers, and rather than sending them away the men would have been obligated to teach them and bring them back to Judaism. The fact that the author of the article has a big enough ego to ignore thousands of years of Jewish interpretations to try and claim he is right just shows his hubris, not his knowledge.

In short- the site reads like the site of a not so learned charlatan that is desperate to try and sell himself as an expert but fails miserably and would only appear learned to the uneducated! And yes, every time you post the same rubbish we will show how easy it is to refute its bad scholarship!

edit: this article supposedly refutes the criticism of the previous article, it doesn't. He deliberately concentrates on ONE aspect of the criticism and ignores every other criticism. On top of that Jewish scholars debate semantics and grammar in HEBREW, the English is totally irrelevant and there is no such thing as lower/upper case in Hebrew which does not have capital letters. Really, do learn something about how Poskim operagte before trying to defend this idiot who also has no idea.

Oh gee, am I meant to be insulted because you said I'm not a Rabbi and I am only a Reverend... ROFLOL Guess what, I study in a Kollel for 5 hours a day- if I needed smichah, I would just switch to studying the smichah syllabus- no need and I enjoy studying for the sake of studying, something you evidently don't understand...

Oh, and why don't you share the link to Chabad claiming there is a lower case "he" in hebrew, you can back up your claim or is it just more shoddy claims from a poor researcher?