JFJ Forums

Hello, great site!

I’m trying to figure out if I’m Jewish or not:

Rabbinic Judaism says if the mother isn’t Jewish, then the child isn’t Jewish.

Messianic Judaism says a child of a marriage between a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother should be considered Jewish. They don’t have any biblical guidelines, rather they use biblical examples of such marriages to support their argument: Moses had a Gentile wife and King David’s great grandmother was Ruth, the Moabite, yet their children were all considered Jewish.

Howabout the scenario where a child is born to a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish man through fornication? I was born in this situation, raised without a father, raised by a non-Jewish mother, obviously not raised Jewish. I agree with Messianic Judaism that we should turn to the bible to decide who is Jewish, not Rabbinic tradition, but I’m having trouble finding a fornication example. Using OT examples, I wonder if we would have been banished from the Jewish community or if I ever even would have been born, my mother and father being put to death.

If anyone can help me with my identity from a biblical perspective, I’d be very thankful. Don’t worry about hurting my feeling; I believe God loves me regardless of my earthly identiy.

Is Yeshua (Jesus) your Savior?

Yes I am a believer.

I'm just trying to figure out if I am a Jew or a Gentile. In my situation if my father was Italian, it would be easy, I'd be 1/2 Italian. Same for Irish, German, etc. For Jewish people it's more complicated. There's no such thing as being 1/2 Jewish; You're a Jew or your not. I'm sure it's because there's a religious aspect of Judaism where this isn't the case with Italian, Irish, German. Saying your 1/2 Jewish is like saying your 1/2 Catholic or 1/2 Muslim.

If I were an old testament figure, I really wonder if I would have been accepted as a Jew (again, if I would have been allowed to live at all).

Well said...That is the Bottom line...

1) Ruth was a convert, and therefore Jewish.  2)  Torah was given at Sinai, and there is no indication in any event that Moshe's wife was a gentile.  3)  The claim for Jewish identity through maternal descent was a rabbinic enactment because a)  If a jewish man married a gentile woman he pretty much was saying screw this, and b) Jewish women were often raped by Christians in the middle ages and worried for the Halachic standing of their children. 4) Non-Jewish children being born through paternal descent are singled out as particularly receptive to conversion and some authorities hold it a Mitzvah to help them convert.  It is assumed that a child born of a mixed marriage and of paternal descent is in no way prepared for the stringencies of orthodoxy, and quite rightly so, because men are less spiritual than women and less likely to affect the spiritual development of their children--especially after the fact of the ruling (they have broken at least one important law).  Also, men who have the opportunity to marry a Jewish woman and don't are obviously blind because, as the Rabbi's say, the Chein of a Yiddishkeit woman makes her particularly attractive. (See: Modesty, an adornment for life).

I believe, and have stated to and despite the chagrin of my peers, that a person can be about 1/16 Jewish (patrilineally or matrilineally, or by both parents) and still Jewish. Isaac, born of the promise (unlike his Hebrew, but gentile, parents), was the first Jewish Hebrew. Rebekah was Hebrew like Isaac; but gentile like Sarah and Abraham, because she was also not born of the promise. Jacob (Israel) and Esau (Edom) were patrilineally, or "half", Jewish; and Jacob represents Messianic (Christian) Israel (Jewish people), whereas Esau represents non-Messianic people ("Jacob I loved [or "I have loved"]", as reiterated in Malachi 1 and Romans 9).

Meanwhile, being that, like you noted, "Moses had a Gentile wife [Zipporah] and King David’s great grandmother was Ruth, the Moabite [who married Boaz, the son of Salmon and Rahab], yet their children were all considered Jewish." Yaron Yadan of Daat Emet notes that patrilineal Jewishness is of the Tanakh; and, unless I'm wrong, that, like I thought, all Jewish who left Egypt, even if not fully ethnically Jewish before the Exodus, were now considered fully ethincally Jewish. Deuteronomy 26:4-6 specifies what one should say when "the priest shall take the basket out of your hand and set it down before the altar of the LORD your God." (Deuteronomy 24:4)

Let me state FIRST that I am a gentile believer.




EXACTLY! God determines who is Jewish and who is not. And it is not a matter of blood, it is a matter of the heart. (Faith.)

Is one a Jew who is born a Jew and circumcized a Jew? Paul asks. (This is different than the Nation...I am talking about a personal level here.)

Who is a "true Jew"? One that denies the aim of Torah (Yeshua) or one that accepts it?

So, anyway, I look at it like this (and you will see me state it all over the site): there are two people in the world- His and Not His.

There are no hybrids.

I doubt you are going to find the answer you are looking for here. And my suggestion is like I have given to Goy: find your identity in Yeshua, the APEX of Israel. If you look to men for your answers/acceptance, you will be disappointed.

Yeshua is an outcast of (Orthodox/Talmudic) Israel, yet 100% Jewish. If He is outcast, how much moreso you?

Shalom!

Thanks for the response Goy

Because nowhere in the Bible does it explicitly state "you are Jewish if you meet this criteria", all we can go by are specific biblical examples that are similar to a person of today to decide on Jewishness. You gave a number of such examples. Where I struggle is because I was born out of wed-lock to a gentile mother and a Jewish man, I know of no specific biblical examples in the bible. To the contrary, I read of people being banished or put to death for fornication...can anyone show how I would have been accepted as Jewish, Biblically?

KD, please see my post under the thread, "Proof I'm patrilineally Jewish."

Shalom, k.denning, and to one and all,

I know, in my heart, I shouldn't even say what I am about to say, but Shukky-Darn, I'mma gonna say it anyway:  

Was your father truly Jewish, or was he, by chance, from one of the other eleven tribes?  We seem to have shifted National membership, to Tribal membership.  

The Bible/Tanach does say who is 'Jewish,' as a person of the linage of Judah, and the 'Tribe' of Judah.  We, mortals have stripped God of what He wants us all, natural and adopted, to know ourselves as: Israeli (check out the name He gave to Jacob, who begot twelve sons).  Does anyone suppose there was a reason, other than from YHVH, that managed to have the rebirth of the nation, to be called Israel?  'To Judah, the scepter,' yes, but not the national name.  (Sorry if this sounds harsh, but, me-thinks we worry far too much about blood-line, rather than of Messiah/Elohim's 'Blood,' which was shed so all of mankind can be of the same family, which belongs to YHVH.)

k.denning, may I offer, mortal, and off-hand, words, as to your question?:  If your are born of a parent, or in the linage, of any of the tribes of Israel, as Goy states, you are one.  P L U S:  If, as you state previously, you are part of Messiah, you are one, by grafting/adoption.  Who can argue with Messiah?  If He say's you are, and He does, then you are, and no mortal can take that away from you.  Your life they may take, but you inheritance, they cannot.  Soooooo,,,,,,,, Welcome to the family, from an Adopted, and possibly blood-line, SON of YHVH, to you, in your realization, I pray, that there are much more important problems to address, in these, the last few ticks of the 'Church' age, before 'Tribulation.'  Your calling is far more important than what you are called.  Sheeesh, you aught to hear what some people call me.  Ha!

Your legitimacy is clean as a whistle, because, who-ever you may have been, you are the child of God, the best, and only family to be an eternal member of.

To you, K.denning, in your healing, and to one and all, Shalom, in Messiah.

Arley