Who Is a Jew? Tribal Inclusion versus Exclusion

Who Is a Jew? Tribal Inclusion versus Exclusion
I hope Judaism can change so that it won’t be cut and dry as to who is Jewish and who is not Jewish. An important aspect of being a Jew is going beyond the letter of the Law. In this essay, I indicate that going beyond the letter of the law is synonymous with leniency and inclusion in the debate over who is a Jew. It is a reoccurring theme in Judaism that everything is perfect, while Jewish ancestries aren’t perfect, and neither are the histories for that matter, such as historicity of the Exodus from Egypt or the numbers in the desert census of Bamidbar. Thus, in the argument over who is a Jew why pretend like anything has the semblance of perfection in Judaism?
Issues over who is a Jew often stem from the origin of the mother. From what I read, all it says is that in intermarriage the father will turn away the son, but it doesn’t say that the son will actually be turned away in adulthood. What’s wrong with leaving that case open, saying some people pursue Judaism, while some don’t, rather than being so cut and dry, requiring a conversion? Over time, exclusion of children born to gentile mothers could hurt the cause of Judaism. People get angry when they are excluded over birth. Judaism shouldn’t make people angry.
It is also true that now many gentiles are circumcised. This dates Maimonides. His teachings are only relevant so much as they can be, and in the melting pot of cultures that is America, this has implications to Judaism. As a result, I feel comfortable disagreeing with him that one does not have an obligation to a non-Jew to observe Shabbat, nor hardly any other obligation at all. Because there are less cultural differences now between Jews and gentiles, Jews should feel an obligation to be more inclusive, and this already happens much more outside of synagogues.
Who should we help observe Shabbat, but anyone that wants to observe Shabbat? Though the popularity of Shabbat observance is waning, as more and more stores operate on Sunday, there is potentially the possibility that it becomes popular, especially since God rests a day in the story of the creation week. Yet, this is an opportunity for more people to observe on the proper day, Saturday, as not taking a weekly rest can only last so long. Eventually, some people will choose to take a rest, and some might even choose to observe Shabbat in the Jewish way.
As with Shabbat, the same with circumcision: where more and more Jews are opting not to circumcise. I don’t understand how a Jewish marriage where the parents do not circumcise results in a Jewish male, where a male that intermarries, but has his son circumcised results in a gentile male. That seems like a contradiction, and though now it is more and more a reality. There are certain truths in Judaism that are not absolute, and the issue of Jewish identity is one of them. It never has been, especially not since R. Akiva commented the lost tribes of Israel are lost forever due to assimilation. If Jewish identity were absolute, then the lost tribes could not lose their identity. Let’s not pretend like its absolute.
Historically, a non-circumcised male is cut off from his people, but there is no need for his people to make this happen. The same is true for people that are not Jewish, to cut them off from the Jewish people because of their mother. Importantly, in Maimonides time, the line over who is a Jew was more cut and dry, but now it is very blurred because there are so many intermarriages, and the popularity of Judaism in this melting pot America. Similarities in behavior mean that exclusive Jewish attitudes should be a thing of the past, as if the worst thing imaginable would be someone attempting to do a mitzvah and failing for lack of proper understanding of how to observe a tradition. For what purpose is exclusion, unless for elitism? The purpose of elitism was Maimonides thinking of the time back when only Jews were circumcised, but times are different! Jews now attend secular colleges, where these anachronistic separatist ideas no longer work or even seem reasonable.
The future promises that gentiles will often be circumcised because they feel it is important to their religion, Christianity or Islam, while more Jews will not circumcise. This is already happening today, as the amount of those getting circumcised decreases now that the medical establishment doesn’t support that circumcision is any better than not having it.
There is also the possibility of pockets of Judaism developing within Christianity, where people report that Jesus was only a human teacher, but will circumcise their young, as is the case with many in the Unitarian Church. This can only mean one thing. Judaism is more accepted, and this acceptance should be returned with more leniencies from rabbis on the issue over who is a Jew or it might mean more cults if Judaism does not make an effort to be more lenient, where observant gentiles might start a Jewish cult.
The line of thinking where obligations change according to whether or not one is Jewish or gentile in my opinion ought to be defined partly by behavior and partly by ancestry, and this much Torah supports. Rabbis can recognize Jewish behavior, but that should be more important to a rabbi rather than how one is behaving relative to the origin of that person’s mother. Judaism has always been a religion of behavior, and that should be a rabbis’ concern for adults. Obviously, one behaves like one’s parents, usually, so naturally there is parental inheritance of a Jewish idea and/or behavior. However, unless a person is a jerk, one does not enter a synagogue without intentions of learning Jewish behavior, where I think an attitude of including someone to Jewish behavior is important. After all, these behaviors are healthy for anyone to perform, not just Jews.
Tests for determining who is a sincere convert, or is sincere in behavior never work. People are fickle, one minute they appear sincere the next they don’t. There is no protection to this. Sure, rabbis hope to attain a natural push and pull with the subject matter, and if that is the goal, then go for it, but encouraging one to one’s national identity over Judaism is a fraud. Maybe we could do that if we could identify the other Torah nations, but as of now Jews have a lot to offer as a nation, and the event of the lost tribes is every reason to extend love to one’s neighbor, be he/she Jewish or not. What we don’t want are people that would pass the test for sincerity operating outside the religion, and that will happen if the wrong person is turned away.
Ruth had no mikvah in her conversion, but a mikvah can be valuable in demonstrating that one is sincere. The Torah also knows of half-tribes, and paternal ascent, such that in intermarriage, one should be able to indicate that they are Jewish, but not necessarily have to walk into the mikvah as a non-Jew, and emerge as a Jew. Bathing is more common these days, and the powers of a mikvah aren’t supernatural, as the ritual would have us believe. The lost and Christianized Ethiopian Jews will gain nothing supernatural from ritual immersion, except a firm belief that they are doing something Jewish. Yet, mikvahs are not a protection that future generations of Ethiopian Jews won’t convert back to Christianity, or face some other sort of assimilation, so let’s not pretend. Consequently, the Tanach’s idea of conversion is not what it is in modernity, and maybe it is time to revert to the historic idea of conversion, as it was with Ruth.
Though ritual purity, the laws of mikvah, is an entire volume of the Talmud, it is certainly not as important to be as one of the six pillars of Judaism, over history or Hebrew. My feeling is that most of R. Judah haNassi’s version of the Mishnah has its origins during the Davidic kingdom, which had also been combined with the words G-d gave to accompany the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Thus, the Mishnah largely represents the Jewish legal system during the first and second Temple periods. Before this it is likely Celtic people were Israelites, before there were laws of ritual immersion. Thus, there was a great period of time where the Israelites were tribes both before and after the Exodus. My reasoning is that Jews are white, and thus genetically probably have a common ancestor 50,000 years ago with Celtic people, according to science. In my theory, the Exodus occurred some 50,000 years ago. Maybe this date is exaggerated, but the point is made. White people have a recent origin in human DNA, most likely from living in Nordic areas and this includes both Celtic people and Jews. The nation of Abraham, the Chaldeans is white. Thus, at some time Celtic people separated from the people that became known as the Jews, and that this became very apparent during the Davidic kingdom in roughly 1,000 BCE. Additionally, there is genetic reason to believe in the Adam and Eve story, as genetically there is evidence that all humans descend from the same two humans and the Noah story, as there is historical evidence that at one time humans were an endangered species.
Jews that go to college are often more welcoming than traditional Judaism requires. This is the spirit of going beyond what the Law requires! More exclusion is not the spirit of Judaism, by its followers, though many rabbis seem unsure of this, but that is only a historical perspective and it no longer represents the modern reality. This is the modern reality. I would expect that if an average Jew observed Shabbat at a college that his door would not only be open, but he would be happy and thankful for any company, such that he would eagerly assist someone interested in joining him regardless of the origin that his fellow student’s mother. I use Shabbat as an example because the Talmud says that Shabbat observance is the barometer for determining who is a Jew. Consequently, Judaism should adapt by showing obligation to help any person that wants to observe Shabbat fostering an attitude of inclusion rather than exclusion, as this represents how the majority of Jews feel.