Half –Jewish - The Aish Rabbi Rep[lies]

In a response to a question about patrilineal descent, the Orthodox rabbi from Aish gave the following response.  I will make my comments below it.

http://www.aish.com/atr/Half-Jewish.html?catid=907779

“Jewishness is passed on via the mother. If the mother is Jewish, the child is 100% Jewish. If only the father is Jewish (but not the mother), then the child is 100% not Jewish. Jewish identity passed on through the mother has been universally accepted by Jews for 3,300 years, and was decided by God, as recorded in Deuteronomy 7:3-4. The Talmud (Kiddushin 68b) explains how this law is evident from those passages. Modern attempts to revise this law have caused a dangerous split in the Jewish people.

In another sense, however, the father does passes on lineage, in terms of which tribe the child belongs to. This determines whether the child is a Cohen, Levite, or Yisrael. See Numbers 1:20-46 which explicitly categorizes the Jewish people by their "father's house."

Of course, in the event that one’s mother is not Jewish, there is no significance to which tribe the father comes from, since the child is anyway not Jewish.

It should be noted that just because someone's last name is "Cohen" doesn't mean that he has the status of a Kohen. To be considered a Kohen, one must have an unbroken tradition, as well as other factors too numerous to mention here. Nevertheless, it does turn out that many people who have the name Cohen also have the status as Kohen.

From the fact that the religion of the child goes by the mother, while the tribal affiliation goes by the father, we see that both parents must take an active role with the child. The mother is entrusted with the awesome duty of instilling in the child faith in God, observance of mitzvot, and Jewish pride. By way of metaphor, we see that the mother gives the baby food and love that brings out its internal potential. This is in contrast to the external qualities, represented by tribal affiliation that is the father's duty.”

The rabbis may claim it is a 3300 years old law of matrilineal descent, but this is actually false.  The verses from Deuteronomy 7 are as follows:

1 When the LORD thy God shall bring thee into the land whither thou goest to possess it, and shall cast out many nations before thee, the Hittite, and the Girgashite, and the Amorite, and the Canaanite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite, seven nations greater and mightier than thou

3 neither shalt thou make marriages with them: thy daughter thou shalt not give unto his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son.

4 For he will turn away thy son from following Me, that they may serve other gods; so will the anger of the LORD be kindled against you, and He will destroy thee quickly.

First, the prohibition applies to both men and women marrying the 7 nations cited in V1.   It is not gender specific.

Next, V4 is speaking about the nation, e.g. Amor, Canaan, etc, who will turn “your son” away.  This is the same son (or daughter) as mentioned in V3.   The rabbis claim it is the offspring of the Israelite woman and Canaanite man.   Although I have written about this before, http://tanakhemet.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/the-false-assumption-of-matrilineal.html  it is worth repeating:

In Exodus 34,

“6 and thou take of their daughters unto thy sons, and their daughters go astray after their gods, and make thy sons go astray after their gods.“

If the Talmud’s understanding of Deut. 7 is correct, then Exodus 34 is referring also to your grandsons, ie the offspring of the 7 nations women and Israelite men. So the whole argument of matrilineal descent is demolished.

The next claim that the rabbi makes is also contradictory: “the father does passes on lineage, in terms of which tribe the child belongs to.”

But “Jewish” is nothing more and nothing less than being  part of a tribe.  In this case, the tribe of Judah.  Thus, the tribal affiliation of Judah is passed on through the father, and not the mother.  A female can only get her tribal affiliation from her father. If her father is from Dan, she will not be Jew-ish, but Dan-ish, and this is not the Scandinavian  variety.

The rabbis gets himself into deep trouble by quoting the Torah:

“Numbers 1:20-46 which explicitly categorizes the Jewish people by their "father's house."”

To be more precise,  Numbers categorizes the Israelite people by their patrilineal descent.  This includes, Judah, and hence the Jews.

Num 1:

2 'Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, by their families, by their fathers' houses, according to the number of names, every male, by their polls;

The category of Jewishness as defined by the rabbis is not what the Torah teaches.