Quest for Judaic Identity: And Its Many Paths

By Douglas Kaplan

Judaism is a religion.

Jews are people.

While the two are closely associated, they are, nevertheless, distinct entities. The Old Testament identifies a Jew as an individual who is a direct lineal descendant of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and, if male, they must be circumcised.

The Jew acquires Jewish genetic identity at the moment of conception. That identity is not lost by conversion to another faith or adoption of atheism. A converted Jew who returns to Judaism is not obliged to convert back since that person never stopped being a Jew. Jewish genetic identity cannot be created or altered by conversion which simply involves religious instruction, blessings by a cleric, and immersion into a ritual bath.

In the third century A.D., the rabbis altered the biblical source of Jewish identity from the Jewish male to the Jewish female causing abject retrospective and prospective confusion. Today, As a result of that change, a Jewish husband married to a gentle wife must procure a token, but ineffectual conversion for his wife, before childbirth, in order to maintain that his child was born Jewish.

Without a verifiable identity, a person does not exist.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9781649797056

Douglas Kaplan

Douglas Kaplan was reared in a traditional (Orthodox) Jewish home. The accommodation to the tenets of his faith was simple. Like many religions, the rules comprised of a well-established array of dos and donts. At age 7, he was placed in a yeshiva (a Jewish Parochial School) where he was instructed on the sacred texts of Judaism. All of that material was presented to his class as if it were a dinner prepared by a divine chef whose menu was not subject to question. It was presented to be learned, often memorized, but rarely questioned. He was occupied with the practice of law for more than 60 years. Upon retirement, he set out to academically examine and digest the religious meal that was served to him in my early youth.

Book preview

Quest for

Judaic Identity

And Its Many Paths

Douglas Kaplan

Austin Macauley Publishers

Quest for Judaic Identity

About the Author

Dedication

Copyright Information ©

Who Is a Jew?

By God’s Design Alone

Judaism’s Perilous Journey

The Wandering Judaism

Rabbinical Judaism and Christianity The Prodigal Children of the Written Torah

Scofflaws and Manipulators of the Immutable Torah

About the Author

Douglas Kaplan was reared in a traditional (Orthodox) Jewish home. The accommodation to the tenets of his faith was simple. Like many religions, the rules comprised of a well-established array of dos and donts. At age 7, he was placed in a yeshiva (a Jewish Parochial School) where he was instructed on the sacred texts of Judaism. All of that material was presented to his class as if it were a dinner prepared by a divine chef whose menu was not subject to question. It was presented to be learned, often memorized, but rarely questioned. He was occupied with the practice of law for more than 60 years. Upon retirement, he set out to academically examine and digest the religious meal that was served to him in my early youth.

Dedication

To my beloved children Russell Kaplan, Hillary Gitlitz, Karen Siegel; my sister-in-law Judy Ford and my special friend Gail Lewis all of whom placed guardrails around the minefields of religious introspection.

Copyright Information ©

Douglas Kaplan 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Ordering Information

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Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Kaplan, Douglas

Quest for Judaic Identity

ISBN 9781649797032 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781649797049 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781649797056 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021925545

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2022

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

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Who Is a Jew?

An Introduction

Virtually all Jewish religious denominations agree that a person is a Jew, if he or she had a Jewish mother, or was authentically converted to Judaism. Nothing could be more inaccurate or destructive to Jewish identity. To understand the truth, one must first recognize the unique difference between the identity of a person as a Jew, and the subsequent appearance of Judaism as a formal faith or religion.

Abraham, the first Jew, appears on the world stage on or about 2000 B.C.E. The God of Israel was a tribal god long before the arrival of the Written Torah (circa 450 B.C.E) and any possible notion of Judaism as faith accessible to non-Jews.

A Jewish atheist is still a Jew. A Jew who pursues another faith can still return to Judaism without conversion to the faith of his birth.

The description of who is a Jew is defined with absolute clarity in Genesis, the first of the Five Books of Moses, and requires neither birth by a Jewish mother nor conversion. What is required, is direct and continuous male lineal descent from the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and additionally, in the case of a male child, circumcision.

By God’s Design Alone

Who Is a Jew?

Since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., the world has puzzled over the criteria of what makes a person a Jew. Are Jews an extended family, a clan, a nation, a people, a religion, a race, or can anyone choose to identify himself as a Jew? Is there a distinction between Jews and Judaism? Does the belief system of the Jewish faith belong only to the Jewish people? The trees that provided the paper dedicated to those inquiries might well be enough to repopulate the oxygen-generating forests of the world. On those subjects, we are informed by the Old Testament and the gleanings of history that:

For 2000 years, ending with the First Century C.E., the identity of the Jew was not in issue. Patrilineal Jewish identity had been more than adequately described in the Torah granted to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai in 1280 B.C.E. and transcribed in the Written Torah brought to the Second Temple by Ezra, the Scribe in the fifth century B.C.E.

Isaac, and ultimately, Jacob, followed in the patrilineal line from Abraham.

Jacob’s patrilineal line was the formula for the Twelve tribes of Israel, which, coincidentally, did not include his daughter, Dinah.

God’s design of the Jewish people and his gift of the land of Israel followed directly along patrilineal lines.

Upon the death of the biblical father, his entire estate went to his sons, according to Numbers 27 (8–11). If a man dies, and have no son, then you shall cause his inheritance to pass to his daughter.

All biblical identification (naming of Jews) was done patronymically, e.g. Joshua ben (the son of) Nun. It is a formula used today when calling a Jew to the Torah.

The religious personnel of both holy temples were selected patrilineally, i.e. kohanim (priests) and Levites were identified through the lineage of their fathers, a circumstance which exists even to this day, as an honorarium and in the event of the future construction of a Third Temple.

The Written Torah, by its own text, alleges that the Ten Commandments were written by the finger of God, Deuteronomy 9 (10). Some believe that the remainder of the Torah had similar authorship, or that it was written by Moses. However, modern authorities suggest that it was the work of four early historians who attempted to assemble and correlate Judaism’s historic events and laws. Whether by the finger of God, or the efforts of historians devoted to transcribing the word of the Creator, it is a distinction without a difference. Its text was, and is, accepted by Jews as the history of the Jewish people, the description of Judaism’s sacred design and origin, and the essence of the solemn relationship between the Jewish nation and its God.

Chosen People or Designed People?

Frequent suggestions are made claiming that the Jews are God’s Chosen People. Nothing could be further from the truth. God did not choose an existing people. Abram was 70 years old when God first selected and spoke to him. God chose an older gentleman with a barren wife, Sarah. She was childless until she was 90 years of age, when God arranged for her to have a child. God did not select or choose a people. He designed one, out of the rootstock of Abram and Sarah, as