It is written in Kiddushin 3:12: To be Jewish, one must be the son of a Jewish mother or have converted to Judaism. By this rule, scholars say that Judaism is «matrilineal.»

However, this was not always the case. Professor Shaye J. D. Cohen of Harvard University states: “Numerous Israelite heroes and kings married foreign wives: for example, Judah married a Canaanite, Joseph an Egyptian, Moses a Midianite and an Ethiopian, David a Philistine, and Solomon married women of all kinds. By marrying an Israelite man, a foreign woman joined her husband’s clan, people, and religion. It never occurred to anyone before the Roman exile to argue that such marriages were null and void, that foreign women should «convert» to Judaism, or that the children of such marriages were not Israelites if the women did not convert.” In biblical times, Judaism was “patrilineal”; it was passed from father to son, and there was no process of “conversion” to Judaism.

 Some scholars attribute the beginning of the shift from patrilineal to matrilineal to Ezra the scribe. The Book of Ezra tells us how, after returning to the Land of Israel from the Babylonian exile, he ordered that all Israelite men divorce their foreign wives because of the potential risk this posed to Jewish identity (6th and 5th centuries BCE). Others explain the shift to matrilineal status by the influence of the Roman Code among the sages of the Academy of Yavne, established after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in the 1st century CE. Finally, when the Mishnah was codified by Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi in the 2nd century CE, the concept of matrilineality was established as the norm that defines who is a Jew.

But new changes began to take place in 1970 when the Law of Return was amended in Israel. It recognizes as Jewish those who are descended from a Jewish mother, father, grandmother, or grandfather and do not practice another religion, as well as those who converted to Judaism. Years later, in 1983, the Reform movement broke with the traditional halachic definition and declared that a child is Jewish if at least one of his or her parents, either the father or the mother, is Jewish and raised as such. The Reconstructionist movement also adopts the same position, remaining faithful to its principles of complete religious equality for all.

In contrast, Orthodox Judaism today considers as Jewish only those born to a Jewish mother, and this status, for them, is never lost, even if the person practices another religion. They also accept converts to Orthodox Judaism. On the other hand, the Rabbinical Assembly, the association of Conservative rabbis, has reiterated its commitment to the current halachic norm, although more and more members of this movement believe that patrilineal descent should be accepted.

The definition of who is Jewish has focused for centuries on the paradigm of descent. Our religious authorities, of any denomination, only pay attention to who the parents were. They forget that being Jewish is much more than being someone’s child.

By Marcos Gojman

Bibliography: Various sources.