Jeremy Rosen
Who is a Jew?

Jeremy Rosen - Who is a Jew?

- Jeremy, are you feeling better though?

• I am, thank you. Yes, yes I am. I am.

• Fantastic. Good, good. So, well, let’s give it a couple of minutes. We’ll just say welcome back to everybody, and when you’re ready, we’ll start.

• Okay.

• [Wendy] Thanks, Amelia.

• Okay, okay. Bye.

• [Wendy] All right, Jeremy, we’re three minutes passed, so whenever you’re ready, over to you.

• Okay. Hello, everybody. I should explain why I changed the topic from conversion, to who is a Jew. Because I realised that before you can talk about somebody becoming Jewish, you’ve got to know what being Jewish means and is. And the fact is, that here we are 3,000 years more later on, and we still don’t know how to define a Jew. So I want to explore that before I get to current affairs. Originally, going back to the period of the Bible, we were known as the children of Israel, of the tribes of Jacob, the 12 sons. And this name, the Children of Israel, was the way we entered the land of Canaan and established ourselves there as a collection of tribes. Now, when we look at the Torah itself, the Torah does not give us much help in deciding who is Jewish and who is not. First of all, the term Jew doesn’t come until much later.

So we’ll talk about Israelites to begin with. And the Torah talks about the fact that when they came out of Egypt, they came out of Egypt with an erev rav, a mixed multitude of all kinds people. And they weren’t defined in any way, they might have been political refugees, they might have been people who liked and shared the company of the children of Israel, but they are mentioned in the Bible as being an integral part of this community in the desert. And there’s one interesting case of definition, and that is the case of a son of an Egyptian and an Israelite. The woman is from the tribe of Dan, her son is an Egyptian, and he is described as one of the Israelites. So he, therefore, through his mother, is defined as an Israelite. But tribes were always defined through the father. So here we have a situation in which a child of an Israelite mother is feeling alienated because the tribe of the mother, the tribe of Dan, doesn’t want to accept him. And this leads to a fight, and a punch up, and it’s rather sad, and one feels for this person.

But nevertheless, what’s interesting is that there is this dual kind of citizenship, the citizenship through the mother to be Israelites and through the Father to belong to a particular tribe. Now, ultimately, the tribes are more or less going to disappear, but at this moment, this was a very, very important element. The other interesting feature about the Bible, in its early form, is that it talks about the gere, the stranger, but not as we understand the gere as a convert, the stranger is, sorry, the stranger is somebody who appears, on the face of it, to be anybody who wants to live amongst the Israelites, who wants to be part of the people. There’s no, if you like, definition, and the stranger is given civil rights, has to be treated with enormous respect. If he comes or she comes on bad ways, they go through tough, they can benefit from charity, from help from the community. They are treated as very important members of the community and not expected to go through any kind of conversion or anything, nobody mentions the idea at all. The gere, therefore, at this moment, is anybody who comes into the community. And it seems from the Bible that if you come into the community, you’re absorbed by the community, whether it was Ruth, the Moabitess, whether it’s the fact that King Solomon had all these wives, 700 wives and 300 concubines he brought into the community, and clearly some of them continued to carry on to worship pagan gods while they were in Jerusalem.

And so it seemed that here was a community rooted to a land, and if you come into that land, you’re part of the community. Rather, like in our day, anybody who gets citizenship in whichever country, no matter what their religion or their background is, they’re citizens, and they’re entitled to these rights of citizenship. As you know, after King Solomon died, the tribes split into two. The 10 Northern tribes were known as Israel, the 10 southern tribes were known as Judah, Judea. The Israelites, as you know, were conquered by the Assyrians and take away into captivity. The Judeans carried on for a bit longer. And whereas the 10 Northern tribes were scattered, the Babylonians, who conquered the Judeans, plunked them together in one place in Babylon where they were able to form a community. So all of a sudden, they’re transported from a situation where their God is a God related to a land, to a God where God is wherever you are, kind of universal. But it appears that in Babylon people were quite happy to assimilate, to marry whoever was around, it doesn’t seem to have been a problem. And it’s not until the arrival of a man called Ezra, a man called Ezra, born in Babylon, part of the elite, is the man whose task it is to revive the community of those Jews who return to the land of Israel. And when he returns to the land of Israel and tries to reveal the temple, the first thing, he turns around to the priest and said, “You priests, you are all married out, you got non-Jewish wives.

From now on, no more non-Jewish wives.” Now, it’s not clear whether this applied to everybody, or only the priests. But at any rate, this is Ezra, who is the first person to introduce the idea that marrying out, so to speak, is a problem. And that is, if you like, the basis of this new development. Simultaneously, those Israelites who returned to the land of Israel were all Judeans, and that is where the term Judean-Jew comes from. So, Israelites was now associated with the corrupt, decadent northern kingdom, and Judeans, or Jews, tends to become the more common usage for us at that particular moment. And at that particular moment during the Persian and the Greek era, there was religious tolerance, people mixed, and came, and moved in and out. You want to join us? You’re welcome to join us. You don’t want to join us? No sweat. You want to move somewhere else? You move somewhere else. This is then the moment at which somewhere along the line to become Jewish involved some form of conversion. Now, initially the only model they had was a model of Ruth, and Ruth says to Naomi, “Where you go, I go. Your God is my God. Your people is my people.

Where you die, I will die and be buried there.” So here we have, if you like, the definition of loyalty to the Jewish people, people and God. And we have examples of very, very important rabbis who come from Greek backgrounds, Shemaiah and Atayan, Onkelos, one of the commentators on the Torah to Aramaic. You have Aquila the Gere, the stranger, the convert. And you have two different attitudes to these converts. We Jews can’t agree on anything. There’s a famous story which is told in the Talmud of a man who comes along to Shammai. There were two great rabbis about 2,100 years ago, in the generation before the common era, and before the destruction of the temple, one of them was Hillel, who himself was a Babylonian, and the other was Shammai. Shammai was known as a strict man, a man of the law, but a reasonable man. His famous phrase is “Always treat everybody with respect, and an open mind, and an open face.” And Hillel, who was popularist, who everybody loved, Hillel, he was a lovely, lovely man. The story is told the convert, or somebody would be convert, comes along to Shammai and says, “Look, I’d like you to convert me, if you can teach me the Torah standing on one leg.” Well, Shammai had no patience for him. He took a stick from behind the door and said, “Get the hell out of here!” And off the guy went. He turned up with Hillel and said the same thing, “I want to convert, if you can teach me the Torah standing on one leg.” So Hillel said, in the famous words, which was later borrowed by Christianity, “Fine, love your neighbour as yourself. Or what is hateful to you, don’t do to your neighbour.

That is the essence of the Torah standing on one leg, you are now converted. But I want you to come back tomorrow for your first lesson.” And that’s what happened, and he was welcomed. And there are various stories about this, the other famous story is that he says, “I want you to convert me, provided you only teach me the written law, not the oral law.” And Hillel said, “Fine, come back for your lesson tomorrow.” Comes back for the lesson tomorrow, and Hillel teaches him Alef Bet. He comes back the second day, and Hillel teaches him Bet Alef. The convert turns around and says, “Hold on, make up your mind. Yesterday it was Alef Bet, today it’s Bet Alef. What is it?” And Hilel said, “Listen, you trusted me, you trusted me to teach you the written law, so trust me to teach you the lot.” And once again, he converted him, and that’s a story. But in the Talmud, you do have different attitudes. Some people who welcome geres, strangers, some people who don’t. And you have the introduction of this division between the gere, the stranger, and the gere ascetic, the convert. The gere, according to the Talmud, is anybody who abides by the seven basic rules that Noah was given. What were these seven basic rules? Not to blaspheme, not to worship idols, not to murder, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to be cruel to animals, and to set up courts of justice. Anybody who abides by a legal system, and abides by these moral laws, according to the Talmud, is regarded as one of the pious of the nations, they don’t need to convert to Judaism at all if they don’t want to. They’re perfectly good human beings and must be given equal civil rights. Absolute equal civil rights. So there’s a distinction then between the gere, the stranger, who is if you like, just taking out his citizenship papers, and the gere ascetic, the righteous convert, the convert who converts out of religious commitment.

And so, in the Talmud, the only kind of conversion they understand is based on the idea of religious commitment. Now, 2,000 years ago, you have the emergence of Christianity and Islam. Before that moment, before that time, Jews were very happy to convert, and in fact, there were a lot of non-Jews hanging around the synagogues in those days who were interested, but found the laws a bit strict and a bit too much. And eventually when Paul, Saul of Tarsus, creates a Christian alternative with nice ideas, but not so much heavy duty lifting work with commandments, and rules, and regulations, he attracted a large number of them, they were very attracted to it. You might say in some ways the difference between those were orthodox and reforming offtake. And anyway, at that moment, it’s clear that conversion was quite a common thing, but once Christianity and Islam appear on the scene, it’s a different picture altogether. The different picture altogether is this, we have Council of Nicaea, 325, Constantine the 1st, converting, if a Jew converts somebody to Christianity, the death penalty. And the same thing happened a few hundred years later under Islam, Jews who converted were risking their lives. And there was a famous case in the 11th century in Oxford of a deacon who fell in love with a Jewish girl, and converted to Judaism, and he was burnt at the stake for his pains.

So conversion became very, very dangerous. And that’s where, suddenly, the whole attitude of Judaism to conversion turns inwards, and they say, “Look, we don’t need to convert to anybody. It’s not as though we believe we are the only way to heaven. We are open-minded about this, anybody can get there, we don’t want to push it on anybody.” And there was a formulation that started in the Talmud, and then became, during the mediaeval years, during that time, it became the law. When somebody comes to you to convert, to the court of law, to the beit din, they say, “Do you not know that we, as a people, are oppressed and run down, that we are persecuted and chased around the world? Why would you want to join us? And do you not know that being Jewish involves adhering to a lot of laws and regulations, and it’s quite oppressive? Why would you want to join us?” And if he were to say, “I know I’m not worthy, but I’d like to join you,” you welcome him with open arms, and you teach him some of the laws, some of the positive, some of the negative, and slowly, slowly you build up. That procedure is enshrined in our legal system, and yet, despite the fact that it goes back so long, the situation was that Jews simply were too frightened to convert, and didn’t convert, and not only that, but they thought that converts would get them into a great deal of trouble. For as long as Jewish communities ran according to their own rules, for as long as they were oppressed, it wasn’t a significant problem.

There were occasional people who did convert out of Islam and out of Christianity over the years, depending on what kind of regime they lived under, but by and large, it went the other way, because there were more rewards to convert to Christianity and Islam. If you did, first of all, you could take all the family money with you from all the other members. Secondly, you’ll get special lodging and accommodation, apart from the fact that you were made a little bit of a hero. Things began to change in the 18th century with what we call now enlightenment. But frankly, if that was enlightenment, I’d rather do without it. But nevertheless, that was the beginning of it. And slowly, because Jews were allowed to move out of the ghettos, and move into society, and begin, in a way, to integrate society, they hoped desperately that if they could possibly join that non-Jewish world, they would become accepted. And so so many of them did, again, Mendelsohn, grandchildren, all married out. Didn’t do them much good in the long run, but that’s what happened. And that was the norm throughout the period of the 19th century, large numbers of people, a composer wanted to succeed in life, a novelist wanted to succeed in life, anything like that, you’d probably have to join the other side, so to speak. But at the same time, there were people who wanted to join Judaism.

After all, if you are a very, very wealthy Jew, there are many non-Jews who were fortune hunters who would be very happy to marry into your family. And if you were still to some extent hanging on to the past, and many of them, certainly in Britain, and in America, and in Europe, were not holding on much, but if you were, you might ask that person to convert. And here you have the problem, here you have somebody who’s converting not out of religious commitment, but converting out of either financial gain, or love, or whatever it was, but it wasn’t ideological, it was, if you like, social and personal. And for people like this, the process of conversion was a real challenge. And as you know, at about this time in Central Europe and in the Americas, Judaism is now split between those who want to take a more modern view, we’ll call them reform, whatever title it is, but they span the community in general, in different denominations, and those who want to stick to the old standards and the old days. The old days and the old standards remained, “I’m sorry, conversion requires absolute commitment.” On the other hand, the new people are saying one of two things. Either they’re saying, “Look, we’ll give you a conversion. We’re not that strict, we’ll make it easier for you, and you don’t have to abide by all these things that the Orthodox do.” Or they said, “We’ll change the law.” For example, in the case of reform in America to say, “We’ll accept patrilineal,” that’s descendants of fathers, even if the mother is non-Jewish, where’s the Orthodox remained on the matrilineal line.

And of course, there was another group, probably the biggest group of Jews, who said, to hell with the whole religious business, we’re Marxists, we’re socialists, we are secular, we don’t want to be involved in this religious game, we feel ourselves Jewish, not necessarily in a religious way, some of us are Jewish because we’re persecuted. And if we are persecuted, we are identified. And if we are identified, we’d have the option of escaping, or we have the option, alternatively, of remaining part of the community. So, in all these cases, you now have Jews who may not be Jewish by the Orthodox definition, or by a religious definition of any kind, and yet who still consider themselves to be Jewish. In America in particular, you have a whole array of famous show business and other personalities who were Jewish in the sense of joining an affiliation, but not necessarily in terms of practising a religion. So this is the challenge that modernity has brought about. And to make things even more complicated, we have the rise of the state of Israel. And the state of Israel, as you know, rose in 1948 after the catastrophic Holocaust, in which the Nazis defined Jews in a very different way to the way the religious defined Jews. We defined it in terms of a Jewish mother, or in terms of religious commitment. The Nazis said, “Well, one Jewish grandparent will do.” And because Israel decided, quite rightly, that it had to act as the one place where anybody who was persecuted for being Jewish, however that was defined, should have somebody to stand up for them, and so the state of Israel established what became known as the Law of Return.

That is to say, anybody who has Jewish ancestry, even if it’s not religiously acceptable, has a right to come to Israel if they feel they’re being persecuted or just if they feel they want to identify. So you now have a third rung, you have the Orthodox definition of a Jew, you have the assimilated, and the reformed definition of a Jew, they’re not the same thing, of course, and now you have the Israeli definition of a Jew, which in itself raised some interesting questions. Because there was a famous case in the early years of the state of a brother Daniel, a Dominican monk who was born Jewish, who converted to Catholicism, came to Israel, was living in Haifa, and said, “According to the Law of Return, I am Jewish. I want to be recognised as a Jew.” And the Supreme Court, Israel Supreme Court, had to deal with this, and they didn’t know how to deal with it. And they argued, and they debated, and in the end, they came to an interesting conclusion. Their conclusion was that once you join another religion, and he had become Catholic, that is what takes away your Jewish identity. That’s highly controversial. Interestingly enough, according to Jewish law, you could never lose your Jewish identity, no matter what you do, you are still a Jew at heart. If you abandon Judaism, we will welcome you back. So, ironically, here you had a definition that, strictly, wasn’t an Orthodox definition, although it looked a bit like it in some ways. And then you had a case of famous Benny Shallot, who I actually went to school with very briefly, who, when at a university, married a lovely non-Jewish girl, and came with her to Israel and had a child, he also went to the Supreme Court to get the child registered as a Jew, even though the Rabbinate in Israel would not accept him, the child, as a Jew. And he won the case in the civil court, and so civilly he was defined as a Jew, even though religiously he was not.

And we’ve had this massive problem with the great Russian immigration, which has done so much for Israel in so many ways, in which possibly even half of them are not technically Jewish according to Jewish law. And yet they can serve in the army, they can win gold medals for Israel in the Olympic Games, and yet they are technically not Jewish in religious terms. Now, it’s true that the Beit Din in Israel will say, “We’ll convert you, no problem.” But a lot of these people say, “I’ll be damned, I’m Jewish! I was treated as a Jew by the Russians, I was treated a Jew by everybody else, I’m not going to have to go through conversion. Why should I humiliate myself this way?” And one has a lot of sympathy for that, a lot of sympathy for that, as I have a lot of sympathy for people who go to other denominations that are not orthodox, get a conversion, and then find themselves unaccepted, either when they go to Israel, where there’s the rabbinate which is controlled by the Orthodox, or where they come to other communities in the diaspora who are Orthodox, and they want to fit in. So this has become a very serious problem in Jewish life today. And there are several aspects of it that matter to me. I was brought up in England, and in England, because it’s a centralised community, the Orthodox rabbinate has a stranglehold, in effect, on much of Jewish life. Many of the schools initially were all orthodox schools, and if the Orthodox did not think you were Orthodox, you couldn’t get in. Now there are other schools that are more open, or of a different character, but in those days, that was the norm. And the Beit Din was excessively strict.

And it said, “Look, I’m sorry, we do not accept conversion for people who just wanted as a quickie way of getting a wife, or a husband, or their hands on somebody else’s money, or whatever it is. And we’re not going to convert anybody who is not 100% Orthodox, so we will require somebody who wants to convert to go and live in an orthodox community, we will require of them that they show, in practise, how strict they are, every single law of Shabbat, every single law of Kashrut, the whole works. And if they don’t, we’re just not prepared to accept them.” And in one sense, you may argue that’s fine if you want to apply strict standards to yourself. But applying these very strict standards to a whole community raises difficulties, and the difficulties it raises are on both sides. From one point of view, the difficulty is that sometimes you have people who were brought up Jewish, were brought up in a religious atmosphere of some sort or another, but later on when they come to get married, they discover that because the mother was converted, or the grandmother was converted under reform or non-orthodox circumstances, the Beit Din will not accept them for marriage.

And you might have thought that they would be a little lenient and say, “Okay, look, you’ve been brought up, you’ve always gone to an orthodox synagogue. You’ve lived this way and done this, so we’ll just go through a formality.” But no, they usually insist on being very, very strict to the letter of the law. And to my knowledge, this has led to many situations where marriages have been broken off, and both parties have ended up disappearing from Judaism altogether. By the same token, I have come across people in England who have said, “Okay, the Beit Din want to play a game? I’m going to play a game. They want me to go and live in Stanford Hill? They want me to go and live a religious life? I’m going to do it.” And for two years they lived it totally, totally, and they aced it in the exam, and they came out with flying colours. And the moment they came out of flying colours, they ditched the whole orthodox practise system. So it’s become a game that people game. And not only that, but unfortunately, there are rabbis around the world who unfortunately will do things for money. And sometimes people will find a rabbi who will convert for a nice, tidy sum. And this is the state of chaos that exists within the Jewish world today over the existence of conversion. Now I’m going to deal in a minute with the specific situation in Israel, but deal with the situation in the diaspora.

As a rabbi, I always wanted to make life easy, I wanted to attract people, I wanted to be tolerant. And the truth of the matter is that I bent the rules sometimes in trying to get round some of the rigidity of some of the authorities in different places. And I have to say that, on balance, looking back over the years, the overwhelming case I have seen of conversions that were done for ulterior motives other than deeply religious ones have failed. Now, there have been a lot of converts that I’ve met who have been the most magnificent rabbis, let alone educated laymen and lay women who have brought up their children to be absolutely orthodox and have passed it down from one generation to another generation. So I am totally, totally in favour of conversion when it’s done for the right reasons. But I do have my doubts about conversion when it’s done for the wrong reasons. And in the diaspora, specifically because in the diaspora the overwhelming atmosphere is a non-Jewish atmosphere, the overwhelming holy days are non-Jewish holy days. The sort of people you are going to mix with and the atmosphere you’re going to live mixed with is predominantly not Jewish, the chances of surviving for future generations is much less.

Not saying it’s not possible, I know plenty of grandchildren who are very, very reformed people, are the most admirable, committed Jews in the world. But on balance, all the statistics show that where there are partners where one has not converted, or not converted out of deep commitment, the chances of survival are pretty weak. And therefore if the argument is “Let’s be lenient, ‘cause we’ve got to keep as many Jews in as we possibly can,” which I do accept, and I do try my best to do, factually, and evidentially, it’s not going to make much difference to the future of the Jewish people. Now, Israel is a slightly different position. And certainly in the early years of the state, people like Rav Goren, who was the Chief Rabbi, first of all in the armed forces, and the Chief Rabbi of Israel, took the view that if you are living in Israel, and if you’re living in a Jewish state, even if you are not religious, the fact is you are conscious of the religious occasions of Shabbat, of Hagim, of festival, and things like that, and therefore we should be much more tolerant. And in fact, there was a tradition for a long time in Israel through the fifties, sixties, seventies, even the eighties, of being tolerant and allowing conversion for people who are going to live in Israel.

There are a lot of people who came to Israel and said, “We are going to live in Israel,” got their conversion, then went back and didn’t, which was an abuse of the system, but there’s an abuse of every system. Any citizenship bureaucracy lays itself open to abuse. But this was a situation. And then we had funny situations, particularly in England, where somebody who’s converted by an orthodox beit din in Israel, comes to England, and the Orthodox beit din and the chief rabbis in England say, “Oh no, you’re not good enough for us. Sorry, you count as non-Jewish.” So this has created this embarrassingly, embarrassingly inhuman system in which nobody knows where they stand, where it’s possible for you to go through a conversion, and then discover you thought you were Jewish, somebody’s telling me I’m not. Israel has become stricter and stricter under the rabbinate. Now, you may say, look how tolerant they were with the Ethiopian immigration, and with other people who they had doubts about their religious identity, but in the end, they were happy to compromise. The fact is, it’s possible to compromise, whether that compromise means looking into the genealogy, or whether the compromise means not applying law as strictly as maybe you want to, and as being flexible. And as sometimes, where somebody has been clearly living a religious life, even though technically they may not be, of bending the rules and just going through a formality.

These are all possibilities that exist in the books. But as with anything in Orthodox Jewish life today, it’s not what the books say, it’s what your particular rabbi says, and some are strict, some are very strict, some are very, very, very strict, and some are ultra-orthodox fanatical strict. And the trouble always is that even in the Orthodox world where orthodox rabbis have carried out conversions other people won’t accept. And so we’re in a situation, in effect, where conversion is possible. If you are absolutely committed, it’s going to be no problem. And that’s why we have, for example, many significant black Orthodox converts within the most Hasidic and ultra-Hasidic communities in the Jewish world who have converted 100%, and you couldn’t tell one Hasid from another Hasid in many cases. And certainly, race has never ever been an issue, never ever been an issue, are far as Halakha is concerned. I’m not saying there haven’t been racists, unfortunately there are racists everywhere. I’m not saying there aren’t prejudiced people, there are.

But from a Halakah point of view, it doesn’t matter what race you are, there are black, Japanese, Chinese, all kinds of converts who are treated with enormous respect, and actually loved, because there is a command to love them, and treated within the community as equals. But in fact, the simple answer is, in the end, it’s going to depend where you want to live. If you want to live in the United States of America, the vast majority of Jews in the United States of America are members of the reform community. Reform community accept the patrilineal, one-parent side, you could convert and be a very welcome, happy member of that community. And it will never be a problem until the time may come when your son or daughter wants to marry somebody in the Orthodox world, and then it becomes a problem. And conversely, if you want to mix in the Orthodox world, and that’s what really matters to you, you will go through an Orthodox conversion regardless of what it takes. But that’s not going to stop abuses on one side or another, there is no such thing as a perfect system, just as there’s no bureaucratic perfect system. Just as the United States of America was not able to get all its translators and allies out of Afghanistan, the world is a messy place.

So, my point essentially here, as with anything in Judaism, is that there are so many different facets of Judaism, so many different ways of expressing Judaism, and particularly in Israel, you have access to all of them, not so much in the diaspora, but particularly in Israel. And therefore, in the end, it’s a matter of choosing where you want to go. Do you want to be a Marilyn Monroe or Sammy Davis Jr. type of convert? They were welcomed in their communities, and they were very happy. They wouldn’t have been welcomed in the land of Israel. So this is, and it’s in all religious areas, which synagogue do you want to go to? Where do you enjoy praying? How much do you want to keep? How much do you not want to keep? There is the letter of the law, there is the spirit of the law, and ultimately there’s your decision as to where you want to fit in. And hopefully, wherever it’s going to be, you are going to find a sympathetic rabbi of one denomination, or sex, or another who will make you welcome. So at this point, I will close my presentation and move over to question time, and I open up and find Romaine answers.

Q&A and Comments:

Q: “How does stranger biblically relate to how our religious Jews in Israel view Arab-Israeli citizens?”

A: Well, I think the simple answer is that we should and must regard everybody in Israel who is a citizen of Israel as an equal citizen, without any question whatsoever. The problem is, there are those people who actually want to undermine the Jewishness of the state. There are people, as we saw, unfortunately, in demonstrations recently, who want to attack synagogues, attack Jews. And this is a problem in the same way that you can say there are Jews who are attacking Arabs and behaving in a way that I would say is totally unacceptable, because you can only use violence, as far as I’m concerned, in self-defense. Self-defense is the only basis for using violence, no matter who you are or where you are. So I would love a situation in which everybody’s living equally. I believe that the current government is trying to rectify certain inequalities when it comes to investment and things of that kind. But by the same token, if, by and large, those people don’t want to accept the fact that Israel is a Jewish state, well, they have other places to go. So it’s not an ethical question, it’s a political question.

Q: Naomi, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could say today, “'If you want to join us, welcome.’ Anyone who sincerely wants to live as a Jew should add to the community, surely. Why do authorities have such a security outlook?”

A: I agree, it would be lovely if we could say to everybody, and we can, to everybody, find a Jewish community you want to fit into and that will welcome you. But don’t try to join one where you don’t agree with their values and you don’t want to be like them. It’s rather like saying to somebody, look, if you want to be a British citizen, I’m afraid you have to abide by British citizenship laws. You can’t go along and say, “Oh look, I want to be a British citizen, but I don’t want to keep this law, that or the other.” So if you don’t, don’t try to get into Britain, try to get into some Caribbean or Asian city state, which will take you in no matter who you are as long as you pay them a lot of money, you can get a passport that way. It’s a matter of, once I said before, where you want to fit in. Standing on one leg is thought to be an idiom referring to a brief interval of time, but in Hebrew, regal more likely means principle, it can also mean a festival, all Hebrew words can be translated in many and different ways. There is no single translation I know of almost any word that can’t be understood in different and various ways. So yes, of course, you are right, and I can think of many, many words that come into that same category.

Q: “What is reconstruction Judaism?

A: I met a very intelligent fellow, he says it depends for reconstructionist, I asked him to explain, didn’t know what it was.” Reconstructionism is a denomination initially of the conservative movement in America, founded by a very knowledgeable and impressive Rabbi Kaplan. And essentially it says we are not fundamentalists, we don’t believe in the literality of the Torah, we don’t believe in adhering to all those laws, we want to completely reinterpret them as we see fit. But we are loyal to the religious tradition as we see it. They fall between the conservative, the conservative Jews of America, who are more inclined to adhering to tradition, they are more committed to tradition than the reformed Jews. They fall in between the two stools, you might say. And of course what religious denomination you belong to, it’s got very little to do with intelligence, there are intelligent and stupid people in all of them.

Q: “Can I have the record please?” You can get the record by contacting Judy Ferrara at the Lockdown University.

Thank you, Eileen Margaret, “I always thought it’s strange how Jacqueline du Pre was able to convert so quickly when she met Daniel Burnbaum. Yes, that was a typical example of it.

You know, he brought her to Israel, she said, look, she’s coming to live in Israel, and they said, "Oh, goody, goody, you’re living in Israel, you’re living in a new atmosphere, we’ll do a quickie conversion.” I don’t know if they paid anything or not, but there were people, as I said before, who, if you come to live in Israel, are much happier to convert you than if you’re staying in the diaspora.

Q: Bobby, “My mother was a Holocaust survivor who, when she immigrated to U.S., converted to Catholicism because she feared Nazis would come to America. I was initially born a Catholic, but older, I became more identified as Jewish, today, I’m totally Jewish. Am I Jewish?”

A: Absolutely. Anybody whose mother is Jewish is absolutely Jewish by the Orthodox definition without any question whatsoever. And in fact, I recently was involved in a marriage between a Jewish member of my community who married a man who was brought up in the reform community, but because his mother was Orthodox, so was born Jewish, he was married in an Orthodox synagogue without any problem.

Q: “Would a converted Jew who lapses be considered a Jew?”

A: Well, yes, actually, from a purely halachic point of view, he would be considered as a Jew, but he would be expected to affirm his loyalty to be accepted, if you like, to perform Jewish functions and ceremonials of that kind. But so long as he said, “Guys, I’m back, this is where I belong,” then yes.

Q: “Can you please comment on so-called cultural Judaism?”

A: Yes, cultural Judaism is a very important feature of the Jewish world. It’s a religion, it’s a definition which says, look, I’m not religious. I don’t believe in God or religious behaviour, I’m totally secular, but I love Jewish history, I love Jewish culture. I think Woody Allen is very Jewish, I think Roth was very Jewish, they’re Jewish to me, I’m Jewish to them. This is part of who I am. It’s made more clear when I see how much anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism is around. But it is a version of Judaism that wants to avoid the religious side, which, as far as I’m concerned, is fine. If that’s what you are happy with, I welcome you. So, that’s cultural Judaism.

Q: “What about conversion of divorce?”

A: Well, Monty, I don’t know actually what you mean by conversion of divorce, so perhaps you’ll come back with another clarification of what you mean.

Q: Carol Cutler, “There have been cases where a person who has been converted and spent the life practising in Jewish religion being refused a Jewish burial on their death. I’ve heard one or two cases, I find that horrific, I’d like to know why.”

A: I don’t know if it was because they wanted to be cremated, which goes against the Jewish tradition, but even if one is cremated, still, the ashes have to be buried. So I’d need more information to be able to answer that question.

Q: “Is an illicit child, a mom’s child, of two separately married Jewish parents accepted by orthodoxy?”

A: No, that’s not. A mamzer’s definition is simply “a child of a forbidden marriage.” That is to say, incest. If a brother marries a sister, that is incest. If a child is born, not out of wedlock, that’s perfectly fine, but if a child is born to a married woman by a man who is not her husband, that is the problem. But otherwise, the term illegitimate is not the same as mamzer. Mamzer is very, very specific. And in Jewish law, you’ve no idea how we’ve always bent over backwards, bent over backwards, to avoid classifying anybody as a mamzer. The famous case in Israel of the Langer twins, who were declared as mamzerim, was a political case, because Rabbi Goren was prepared to deal with it and remove their status as mamzer, but they wanted to take the issue to the high court to challenge the authority of the rabbinate. But by and large, we try our best, our very, very best ever to clarify anybody as a mamzer.

Q: “How do you find religious fanaticism?”

A: Very simply, fanaticism is somebody who tries to impose their views on other people. That, to me, is the ultimate definition of fanaticism, in any religion of any kind, you want to impose your views on other people, even if they’re God-fearing, good human beings, that, to me, is fanaticism. Now there’s another issue of fundamentalism, that’s a difference altogether, but not every fundamentalist is a fanatic. After all, in our tradition, by and large, with one of two exceptions, the more religious you are, the less aggressive and violent you are, the less you are likely to be a murderer. But unfortunately, that’s not the case everywhere.

Q: “Can a Muslim Arab convert to Judaism and serve in Israel?”

A: Yes, and a Christian can too, and I’ve known several of both, several of both. And I’ve actually known a Catholic girl who served in the Israeli Army and remained Catholic, and was very loyal to Israel, remaining a Catholic.

Q: “Thank you for this important lecture. Regarding the karaites, how do they stand in the light of court cases you cited, and where they stand in Israel together from the karaites?”

A: Now, it’s very interesting, many mediaeval rabbis believed the karaites counted as Jews. Who were the karaites? The karaites was a sect in Judaism that emerged roughly speaking just over a thousand years ago, mainly in Mesopotamia in Iraq, who believed that Torah was divine, that Torah came from heaven, but didn’t agree with all the rabbinic interventions and modifications. There are some people who believe to this day that it’s nice to be a karaite, ‘cause it means I don’t have to keep all the laws of the rabbis. The trouble is, you do have to keep those laws of the Torah that the rabbis made easier to keep but weren’t that easy in those days. For example, light on Shabbat, the Torah says you shouldn’t burn light on Shabbat. The rabbi said, ah, this means you can prepare it beforehand and it’s okay. The karaite said no you can’t, says black and white, you can’t. And in fact, to this day there’s a split within the karaite movement between the electric karaites and the non-electric karaites. But the karaite movement was a movement of people so committed to the Torah that, in fact, they were one of the main people who preserved the text of the Torah, the Masoretic Text and the text that we have to today were produced by karaite scholars. So there were many people who consider them to be Jewish. But over the years, they drifted further and further away from orthodoxy. And so although there is some dispute to this day, once again, for them to be considered Orthodox-Orthodox, they would have to come and declare their commitment to Judaism today, which combines the oral and the written law. But in Israel, I believe they are regarded as Jews civilly, although some regard them as Jews Jewishly.

Q: Where do the Marranos fit in?

A: Well, the Marranos, as soon as they had the opportunity, many of them came out and were welcomed back into the community, Spinoza’s father, Donna Gracia de Mendez. So long as they came back into the community, they were welcomed with open arms and treated with great respect, in fact, with greater respect, because they had to go under trials and difficulties to preserve their religion, whereas most Jews who stayed in had it comfy relative to them.

Q: “How does the recent legal decision to recognise conversions for a board impact on the Haredi refusal to do so?”

A: Well, the Haredi say “Too bad, this is a decision taken by the civil courts, by the civil courts in Israel. They recognise them, we don’t.” And so, again, you are going to have converts reformed recognised by the state of Israel, by the civil law, but not recognised by the Orthodox rabbinate. That’s a horrible situation to be in, but that, unfortunately, is the current situation, they’re digging their heels in.

Q: “Am I correctly saying it’s legitimate to regard oneself as Jewish, even if totally non-observant?” to regard oneself as Jewish, even if totally non-observant?“

A: Yes, I most definitely think so. I think observancy is an ideal, but you can still be Jewish if you don’t keep, definitely you can.

Q: "Islam makes it easy to convert, yet their numbers continue to grow in even Europe. Why does it not apply to Judaism?”

A: Well, I think it doesn’t apply to Judaism for two reasons. One of them is, it’s easy to convert, but I don’t think they’re growing through conversion so much, they’re growing for two reasons. One of them, there are billions of them, there are more of them around. If you join in, you’re going to stand a lot more benefits by benefiting from Islamic communities than you are from a couple of million Jews. Which probably explains the reason why, politically, so many more politicians are prepared to support Islamic countries than they are prepared to support Israel. So, you know, I think it’s simply a matter of convenience. You are more likely to meet a Muslim in Britain than you are to a Jew. Even in America, increasingly, there are more Muslims than there are Jews. So if you are more likely to meet them, and meet a nice one, and a likeable one, and want to marry one, you are more likely to convert. In Israel too, you have Jews who convert to Islam, and Muslims who convert to Judaism.

“So many answers to our people 'are some Jews think.’” Yes, that’s the strength and the weakness of our tradition. Just as in America, you have the Supreme Court, you have the Constitution, but look how many Americans disagree, and argue, and want to undermine the Constitution, disagree who, and what, and how, and where. That’s people. Wherever you get people, you get disagreement. And we, Jews, were always a notoriously argumentative people, that’s our strength, and it’s our weakness.

“I was told by France Alica many years ago when she converted that she was not allowed to bring her sick mother into her home.” I’ve never heard of that before. I’ve never heard of that before. I’d be very surprised. It doesn’t make any sense to me. That’s something I’ve never heard of.

“Most Jewish people I know are unreligious, to orthodox, to reform, or anything, yet they’re very Jewish, they stand up, declare themselves.”

So what? Of course you’re Jewish. You’re non-religious Jews, you are secular Jews, you are civil Jews, you are part of the Jewish people. People have been saved, the Jewish people have been saved by so many secular Jews who helped establish the state of Israel. You could even argue that Queen Esther was a secular Jew living in the palace, married to a non-Jewish king and sleeping with him into the bargain. So, being Jewish is not defined only by being religious, it’s one of the definitions, it’s a definition I prefer, it’s a definition I adhere to, but I’m not saying it’s the only one. In certain religions, missionaries are used to convert others to their own view.

Q: What’s the Jewish position on this?“

A: We don’t believe in trying to convert people to another point of view. If they’re good human beings, we’re happy they remain good human beings, no matter what religion they’re in. We’d only want to convert some if he’s a gangster, a thief, and a low-life, of which we have plenty, some, sadly, within our own tradition.

Q: "Do any other religions have such a variable policy on conversion?”

A: Well, yes. All religions have varieties. The Catholicism of South America is not the same thing as the Catholicism of Africa, is not the same thing as the Catholicism of America, the same thing as the Catholicism of England, or of Rome. It’s the same with regard to homosexuality, it’s the same with regard to divorce, it’s the same with regard to everything. All religions, just as all political parties, have wings, right and left, who argue. Humans argue, humans vary. There is no such thing as unanimity, we’re never going to get it. It’s a pipe dream, it’s a peace dream, but it’s something we all dream of nevertheless. Thank you, Carol Bonner, thank you very much.

Q: “Semi-court, should there be a separate church and state in Israel, so all are considered to be treated equally before the law?”

A: Yes, I’m very much in favour of separating religion and state in Israel as it is in America. In America, they’re separated, yet all religious communities can carry on their way. You want to live in Monzeal, you want to live in Williamsburg, you want to live that way, fine. And if you don’t like the person applying to join you, you kick ‘em out and send them somewhere else. And it’s not imposed by the state, I really wish, wish, state and religion was separated, I think it’s bad for religion to be in politics, it’s bad for religion to be in the state, it’s bad for the state. I would wish with all my heart that could happen, but unfortunately, for political reasons, it won’t happen any more than the Democrats and the Republicans in America will ever sit around the same table, or at least all of them.

“You say that what you don’t want to do if a Jew ever feels comfortable, at some point they will not be Jewish, the point of your talk is when that ceases.”

Yes, in other words, you choose whether to be on the fringe of anything, or whether to be further in anything. If you’re on the fringe, you’re more likely to fall off the edge. And if you’re in the centre, you are likely to be more enveloped and more supported. Your choice.

Q: “The founding father of Israel were socialists and kippahs who were completely non-religious. What’s the situation now?”

A: Well, now it’s changed dramatically. First of all, what depends what you mean, “founding fathers of Israel.” Ultra-orthodox Jews were going back to Israel for years and years, and years, and years, hundreds of years long before the state, there was the old yeshu of the Jew, religious Jews living in Tiberius, who suffered in Jerusalem, from the 15th century, the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, all the time. What sects changed was the secular Zionism invading the state. And it’s true that secular Zionists set up the state, and during the first 30 years of the state of Israel, it was a very Zionist, a very secular, socialist, command economy. And throughout the period of that, it really only began to change in the 1970s, and began to change when, for the first time in the 1970s, you had a government, led by Menachem Begin, that was not dominated by the socialists on the left wing. And that’s one of the interesting phenomena, that they were so powerful, and their party, Mapai, was the biggest, most powerful party in the state for years, and years, and years, and look how it has almost disappeared altogether. Now, several things changed that caused that. One of them was the sudden influx of large numbers of very traditional Jews from the Sephardi oriental communities. So whereas the socialist did everything they could do to block religion, to shut it out of the government, and to persuade people to stop being religious, and I experienced this myself in the '50s, I remember going to a secular youth hostel in Tiberius, and on Friday, asking for candles, the hostel manager said, “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t need to keep commandments now in the land of Israel. You’re all Jews here, you don’t need to keep Shabbat, get out of it, go somewhere else.” And when I first walked around in Israel in the 1950s in a kippah, I was made fun of. And you never saw anybody with a kippah in those days in the streets. So, it was that influx. Then it was the change away from the socialist command economy into the sort of dynamic economy that we have in Israel today. And that also meant that socialism lost its grip, and lost its interest. And a large number of disillusioned socialists left and moved abroad. And for all these reasons, now the big growth in Israel is in the Oriental communities, and in the Haredi ultra-orthodox communities, and they certainly are not interested in secularism. And look at the kibbutzim, ideally, they were so idealist, they even reared all their children together in communal children crests. They were idealistic in so many ways, and now they’ve almost all become industrialists, they’ve all become commercial. At one stage, all the best fighters in the elite groups in the Israeli Army were from the kibbutzim, now they tend to come more from the religious Zionists. So times have changed in Israel dramatically, and you see it in the election results. And you see, for example, the strength of the Russian immigration. The Russian immigration is very powerfully anti-socialist, they know what a socialist state was like, I wish the Americans did, but they know what it was like. The last thing they want to do is go back to a socialist state, so they also don’t vote socialist. So all these other elements have, if you like, change the character of Israel.

Q: “As a Sephardi Jew, if I go to Israel, will I be asked to convert, although I’m not Orthodox?”

A: Absolutely not. Absolutely not, besides, generally the Sephardi community is much more tolerant, much, much more tolerant than the Ashkenazi community. So the fact that you’re Sephardi makes life a lot easier for you, and you’ll be made much happier.

“Jacqueline du Pre converted in the UK, not in Israel. She converted through the West London Reform.”

Ah, thank you, I didn’t know that, Hava, thank you for that information. And that’s interesting. So I was misinformed, and I’m glad you said that.

Q: “Since Spinoza, has any Jew been excommunicated?”

A: Well, first of all, excommunication is not a Jewish punishment. We have something called a harem, which means a temporary ban, which was used in mediaeval years to keep people in line. But that has not been used for hundreds of years now. And besides, in Israel, we have civil law and religious law, and there is no such thing as harem in that sense. What you do have is harem meaning, simply, “Look guys, there’s no room for you in this community. Get out.” And that still applies, but that applies everywhere, applies in political parties too. Thank you, Robert.

Anna P., “DNA testing on individuals discovering their heritage, especially as relates to maternal line.”

That’s interesting, that is being much debated, DNA, at the moment. Now, DNA is being used in the orthodox world, for example, to identify dead bodies. So for example, it was used after 9/11, trying to identify people, because if you can’t identify a missing husband, we don’t know if he’s actually dead. So there are some areas where DNA is completely used to identify. But there’s an argument at this moment about whether you can use it to discover Jewish heritage. I know you’ve heard a lot about the genes of the priests, and of the Levites and so forth, but it’s still being debated, there’s still some time to go before it becomes definitive. If it would become definitive, I’m sure in the end it would be accepted.

Q: If you are convert, you want to get a get, can you use your method of conversion to facilitate a fast divorce?

A: I’m sorry, you are a convert, and you want to get a get from a woman or from a man. But using conversion, if the original marriage was a religious marriage, there is no way of avoiding going through the process of getting a get. So even if you convert it, but your marriage after conversion was a religious marriage, you’ll still need a religious get. If your marriage originally was not, in fact, if you were, in many cases, married in a reform community, there are many people who will say, “We don’t recognise your original marriage, and therefore you don’t need to get.” Except other people would say you do beyond a doubt, because you cohabited. So it’s a complex situation, but it’s neither black nor white.

Q: So, how would I define a Jew?

A: I would define a Jew as somebody who’s committed to the survival of the Jewish people. And some, I don’t care how religious they are, if they’re not committed to the survival of Jewish people, for me, I don’t count 'em as Jewish. I don’t care what denomination they’re in. To me, that is what defines a Jew. Now, your commitment could be a historical commitment, it could be a social commitment, it could be a historical commitment, but commitment to the survival of the Jewish people, to me, that is absolutely definitive.

“My reform service is similar to conservative synagogue, going on 40 years, say in the canvasing, same portions, the weekly intensive. Many of us observe Shabbat Kosher.”

Yes, I know that’s the case. There are many, many people in the conservative reform movement who live very, very traditional lives, I don’t suggest otherwise for one moment. Thank you, Emily.

“Fundamental is not fanaticism.”

No, fundamentalism is a mental state. You have fundamentalist Christians who believe every word of the New Testament is true. They don’t necessarily want to impose it on other people, they don’t necessarily go out and fight somebody. Fundamentalism is a mindset, and there are many religious people who are very open in every other respect, but who will take a fundamentalist-literalist point of view.

Q: “You mentioned circumcision, isn’t it essential for a male?”

A: Yes, circumcision is essential for a male, however, when the male is an adult, we have what is called a modified form of circumcision, which is just getting a drop of blood symbolically, hatafat dam brit, and it’s a little blot of blood, which is no more than having an injection.

Q: “So even though Judaism is a religion, can you still be Jewish only culturally?”

A: Yes, I believe you can, but I also believe it depends on who you ask. There are some very religious people who will say no, without the religion, there’s no Judaism. But I don’t belong to that way of thinking.

Q: “My doctor is a mohelet, what’s the status of the babies?”

A: Well, that depends entirely on the rabbi interpreting. Technically speaking, technically speaking, a woman can circumcise, but there are some very Orthodox rabbis who don’t think it’s acceptable.

Q: “Are the Samaritans Jewish?”

A: Less so now than the karaites. Most Jews do not accept them as being Jewish, again, for the similar reason that they were, when they originally, if you take the Bible version, they converted not out of commitment, but out of fear, ulterior motive. And besides, they do not adhere to most of the rabbinic Jewish tradition that we have today. They don’t keep most Jewish laws, they do accept the Old Testament, or the Torah, but the Torah nowadays is a very small proportion of Jewish laws. Most of the laws of the Torah are to do with purity and impurity, which don’t apply to do with the temple, which don’t apply to do with all kinds of rituals, which are no longer relevant, and probably less than a third of the Torah is relevant within a Jewish concept.

Q: “Can a non-Jewish man and his son who are far more from the less Orthodox minion be called to the Torah?”

A: Not until they convert. Once they convert, of course they can, and hopefully they will.

Q: “What’s the status of children born to a married woman, but before the woman completed conversion she had more children?”

A: Those that were converted before completion have to go through a process of conversion, but if she’s living an orthodox life, it’s not going to be a problem in any way, and I know of many cases where that was dealt with very quickly.

Q: What thoughts on surrogacy?

A: Well, surrogacy depends on so many different factors. It depends on the mother, it’s a very, very complicated issue. You can look it up on Wikipedia and get more answers that I can give you in the time left to me.

“Another type of Jewish identity is based on FACA 9, 640th demand commandment.”

Yes, his commandment was, you must not allow Hitler to have a posthumous victory by abandoning Judaism. But then he was a Zionist, and he would not feel very happy about those Jews who hate Zionism, and want to see Zionism end, or the state of Israel destroyed. “I believe the Lemba have a Y-chromosome of the Carnim, they’re not accepted as Jewish in Israel.” That’s true because the Y-chromosome from Carnim applies to so many different other people. It’s not exclusively Carnim, it’s still debated, it’s still highly controversial. But, you know, I would love to see them brought to Israel if they want to come, and I would like to see them converted easily and quickly, as with the Igbo in Nigeria, as with other in Zimbabwe, and other communities in Africa where are people who live a very Jewish life.

Q: “Today, Jews are being treated as a race. Are they a race?”

A: No, of course we’re not a race. How could we possibly be a race? Because we have people of all races within us. So it’s ridiculous. It’s only a race if you’re saying, “I hate all blacks, and I hate all Jews.” Calling all Jews in some way, it seems to be the equivalent of hating all blacks, and it is, it’s lumping everybody together. But I don’t believe for one minute that we are a race. We are an ethnic-religious tradition and a nation, but a nation, like any nation you can name, has people of all different races in it. So it doesn’t make sense to talk of Judaism as race. Just go to Israel and see all the different races there, you’ll see for yourself, it’s impossible to call Israel a race. Our enemies would love to call us racists, and apartheidists, and everything like this.

Q: “What about Louis Jacobs? What happened to him?”

A: He died. A lovely man, I admired him. I thought very highly of him, I thought he was treated very, very badly, and I’m sorry for what he went through. Thank you, Eileen.

Q: “Is a Jew converted after death moments?”

A: No, it’s not rubbish, I may be a Jew according to them as far as I’m concerned, it’s meaningless. It’s like sprinkling holy water over me or something, “Now you’re a Jew.”

“Harley Khrushchev’s daughter was Jewish, but Ben Gurus wasn’t.”

Yes, that’s quite true. Ironic, isn’t it? Very ironic.

“Why not? 'Cause you’re visible on the question and answer.” I can’t answer that, you’ll have to ask the technical people who run this thing. I wish I could help you, but I can’t. So I would go to Lauren, or any of the people who are on the mailing list, and ask them to help you with that. Maybe we can arrange it for another time.

Q: Patricia, “My grandfather was Jewish, my grandmother was a single woman friend of his. How Jewish am I? I’m culturally Jewish. Feel strongly about survival of Jewish people.”

A: Well, I assume that your grandmother was not a Jew. Was she a Jew? If she was a Jew, you are a Jew. And if she was not a Jew, then technically you need to go through a process of conversion. But I’m glad that you are culturally, I’m glad you feel strongly about survival of Jewish people, and I welcome you.

“There are many converts who’ve spent their whole life in Yeshiva.”

Yes, there are many converts who did, and those who actually went the other way. When I was a young man in Yeshiva, there was one of the most brilliant students in one of the biggest yeshiva in Israel, Panevezys, as it was, whose parents were Holocaust survivors, discovered that his father was Jewish, but the end of the Holocaust, he had married a Polish woman, and she had never converted, and therefore, technically, he was not Jewish. And he argued like this, only a Gomorrah cup, only a Taminik cup would argue, “Look, the obligation to keep the Torah is an obligation that falls on Jews. I’m not a Jew, therefore I don’t have any obligation to keep the Torah. And therefore, despite all these years I studied it and all that I know, I’m walking out of here and never coming back again.” Amazing story.

“Either my mother’s father, my grandfather, my mother’s father, my grandfather,” yeah, but he goes through the mother’s line, I think, I’m not certain what you’re asking.

“Several tribes in Africa claim they’re Jewish seeking official conversion.”

That’s true. And there are several organisations in Israel that are trying very hard to bring the tribes of Africa back to Israel, or to identify them as Jewish. There are several, there’s one, . There are all kinds of organisations that are working to do something about this.

Q: “Only a person knows if he’s Jewish. Should you therefore happily have your son marry someone’s committed to Jewish tradition? There’s no answer for commission to Jews, no formal conversion.”

A: No, I want to preserve the traditional way of life, so I want my son, or daughter, to marry somebody who is fully Jewish. I don’t mind if they converted, I don’t mind if their grandparents converted, so long as they are both living a Jewish life, I’m happy for them to marry. And I’d even go further, I’d be happier to marry somebody who is a good, moral person rather than somebody who’s not a good, moral person. So I don’t care even if they are Jewish, if they’re a bad person, I wouldn’t want my daughter or son to marry them.

Q: “What’s the difference between a racist and a race?”

A: Well, I suppose a racist is a person who treats people purely on the basis of their outward appearance, purely on the basis of their eyes, their skin, their mouth, their nose. That would be a racist. Race is to try to define one, and similarly, somebody who defines one racist group as superior to another. That also is racism. A race, as I understand it, biologically, can be defined by biological means. But the trouble is that racism is now used in very different ways and to include all different kinds of people. So for example, what is an Asian race? Is a Pakistani and a China man the same race? Is a Filipina, and shall we say, an Iranian, the same race? But they’re treated as Asians. And similarly within the black world, there’s a big difference between a black American from Nigeria, or from some other part of Africa, or from somewhere else, even from parts of Arabia.

Q: “Is it a must to convert in Israel? Can conversion be done too in the U.S.?”

A: Yes, you can convert in almost any country where there are Jews, you don’t have to convert in Israel. Tribes in Africa, yes, tribes in Africa, I’m a great fan of them. Very impressed by how many of them have preserved so many Jewish traditions, and I’d like to see them brought back into the fold, so to speak, even if they have lived outside of the Jewish community for so long.

Q: “What is the status in , the non-Jewish child who was adopted by a Jew? Does it depend on the age of the child? Time of adoption?”

A: In any case, when you adopt a child from outside of Judaism, he has to go through a process of conversion. Some rabbis are happy to do it as soon as they’re born, so it happens right away. Some people think they should wait till they’re 13. I’ve come across most cases, they’re adopted, they’re converted as soon as they’re born if they’re living in a household which is recognised to be Jewish.

Q: “Can a person who believes in perpetuated Jewish people and lives a Jewish life, but neither their parents can be Jewish without a formal conversion?”

A: Then they’re what’s called friends of Israel, they’re friends of the Jewish people, we should treat them with love and respect. And I would do, and I do do.

“An Israeli soldier took a captive woman, and could marry her after 30 days. Jacob didn’t convert his wives, his mother were never converted.”

That’s quite true, and as I mentioned at the beginning of my presentation, it was not until Ezra, 2,500 years ago, that the question of marrying a non-Jewish person became an issue. So beforehand, yes, plenty of cases. After, not so many.

“I’ve heard somebody wanted to convert and was told he had to live in a certain street in a certain town.” Yes, what they’re saying is, I want you to live in a Jewish atmosphere. I want you to know what living a Jewish life is like. And that’s why they would’ve been told that.

“It’s been found that Israel would allow Africans to be brought to Israel, or find all of Africa would love to come, and would claim to be Judean, and dangerous they would be here simply because they might be fairly well treated.”

Well, that’s a different issue altogether, that’s also another calculation, and I don’t want to get into that.

So, ladies and gentlemen, if there are any more questions, email me. And anything else, and any recommendations for changing the format of this, go to Lockdown University with your suggestions.

Thank you for listening, and I wish you all goodbye.