Patrilineal descent – an affront or an opportunity?

Rabbi Dow Marmur

In the spring of 1983, not long before I came to Holy Blossom Temple in Toronto, I travelled from London, where I had worked for many years, to the United States and Hebrew Union College to interview graduates for the position of assistant rabbi.

As I came to the Cincinnati campus, I was greeted by the late Prof. Jakob Petuchowski with the words, “Welcome to North America as Reform Judaism is about to leave the Jewish People.” 

Shortly before, the Reform Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) had adopted a resolution that would recognize people as Jewish if they had one Jewish parent, father or mother, whereas Halachah, Jewish law, only recognizes a person as Jewish if born to a Jewish mother. The Reform movement would now extend the criterion for Jewish status by accepting patrilineal descent. This decision, Petuchowski implied, endangered the unity and integrity of the Jewish People.

A few years earlier, I had travelled to a CCAR convention to present the way British Reform dealt with the issue. We were trying to balance the predicament of individuals with the demands of Halachah. Jewish cohesiveness had to take precedence, I argued. Petuchowski would have approved.

 As a result, many of my American colleagues came to regard me as a member of an ultra-Orthodox sect disguised as a Reform rabbi. But when I came to Toronto, my Reform colleagues followed the practice I had presented. Here I seemed less of a fanatic, at least in this respect. 

However, the Reform rabbis in Britain have recently changed their practice and now follow the way of American Reform. Their theology has remained the same, but their sensitivity to the realities of contemporary Jewish life in the Diaspora prompted the change. 

Perhaps they also bore in mind that, as a result of rethinking Jewish status, American Reform is now the largest synagogue movement in the United States and more committed to the Jewish People than ever before.

The patrilineal, acceptance of women and men who wish to be part of the Jewish People doesn’t intend to reject all halachic norms but to reflect a concern for Jewish continuity. Intermarriage statistics in the Diaspora have increased at an alarming rate in the last 40 years. Therefore, a growing number of rabbis – not only Reform – have come to realize that unless the organized Jewish community reaches out to people now on the margin, they’ll be lost to Judaism. 

How would I have acted had I still been a congregational rabbi? I surmise that I would have accepted the revised broader definition – for the same reason that I objected to it some four decades ago.

My concern remains the future of the Jewish People. My change of mind would have to do with the conviction that in this case, halachic criteria have become inadequate. When Jews lived in closed societies where they had to follow Jewish law, it was reasonable to maintain the traditional framework. Today, when we live in an open society in which people want to stay Jewish even if they intermarry and only their father is Jewish, that’s no longer possible. Therefore, it’s for the community to accommodate individuals even if it means going against tradition.

Only in tightly knit ultra-Orthodox communities whose members subject themselves to many strictures of Jewish law can the old order be maintained. And their high birthrate assures Jewish continuity among this minority. But what about the rest of us? 

A verse in Psalm 119 reads: “Et la’assot l’HaShem heferu Toratecha, it’s time to work for the Eternal, they have broken Your law.” One of many commentaries has it that a change of one vowel – from heferu to haferu – offers a different reading: “It’s time to work for the Eternal, break Your law!”

Though affirming patrilineal descent may seem to be an affront to the Torah, in view of contemporary realities, it may be a noble way of fulfilling it.