Who Is A Jew? A Whole Bunch, Dammit!

There goes another illusion. Should we really care? Does it really matter what intransigently fanatic religious fundamentalists insist on observing?

Reflecting the truism that fanatics are truly miserable fanatics. That all ideologies, religions and traditions are imbued with a minority of single-minded, indomitably-certain individuals and groups whose fanatical impact is fraught with danger for the moderates among them. Who, while in the majority as reasonable and tolerant beings are still somehow overruled by the minority bigots.

Judaism is by no means exempt from having its own share of ultra-Orthodox mental misfits insisting that their version and interpretation is the only one truly reflecting the wishes of the Holy One. So, who then is a Jew? Traditionally the descent from mother to child guaranteed authenticity. To be a Jew is to be a Jew. One who inherits the mindsets, values and the soul of a people who have shared sorrow and tribulation throughout time immemorial.

That person is a Jew who considers him/herself a Jew. Having to prove nothing to anyone. Belief in self, pride of self, adherence to that belief is what matters. Whether religious or secular, a Jew is one who feels themselves to be a Jew. Irrespective of having any social, traditional, historical, emotional ethos in common with the greater population of Jews; if the Jewish soul is present, the Jew is, also.

Oops, wrong? A draft bill introduced into the Knesset, you say, whose purpose is to stringently narrow and define the acceptance of Judaism in accord with an ultra-Orthodox strand of belief? In Israel, the country that defines a nation? Israel, the country that holds its arms out enticingly, imploringly, to international Jewry, to the diaspora, to come home? That sacred "right of return" yanked out from underfoot?

Even as Israel was created by Zionists whose singular concern was a haven for Jews, and whose secular outlook was undeniable? An Israel whose founding parents were secular in vision and outlook and practise? As descendants of Israel, are not all Jews welcome to return to their ancestral home? Is it possible a foam-mouthed cabal of fundamentalists can exert such power and pressure as to overturn all of that?

People who in good faith have converted to a religion whose adherents are well known to have suffered the most malign slanders and the most horrendous atrocities to be committed against any allied, ethnic, religious, group in history must now face the potential of their conversion being denied? What insanity is this?

When even Conservative North American congregations are in denial over the possibility of the narrowing of recognition of Judaic identity, how can it be possible that a relatively small group of ultra-fanatic religious Jews can dictate to an entire country how they will henceforth be regarded and what their entitlements may be, and whose will be revoked?

This, then, is self-destruction. No outside intervention required.