What does a Jewish child need most from a mother? Forget about the chicken soup””it’s all about the eggs, say a growing number of prominent rabbis. Several recent rabbinic rulings on fertility treatment dictate that a child conceived in vitro is Jewish only if the egg came from a Jewish woman.
The issue is most pressing in Israel, in part because tight restrictions on egg donation have long compelled infertile women to procure eggs abroad, where most donors are not Jewish. But decisions in Israel favoring the genetic mother over the gestational one are also likely to increase the already high demand for Jewish eggs in the U.S., and could call into question the religious status of thousands of children born to Jewish women around the world.
One of the problems of Judaism is that there is no single authority for decision making. For years rabbis have justified the concept of “matrilineal descent” (you’re Jewish if your mother is Jewish but not
This physician rabbi nails it:
“Judaism is not a genetic religion, for the obvious reason that it accepts converts,” says Edward Reichman, a physician and rabbi who teaches Jewish medical ethics at Yeshiva University. “At the same time, you need a legal definition of maternity, and it does make sense that the genetic contributor would be considered the mother of that child.”
If Judaism accepts converts, then why is any of this an issue? And, while there is a “genetic contributor” where donor eggs are concerned, could the “legal definition of maternity” not also include, in some way, the “mother” who carried the children for 9 months and gave birth, or has adopted children?
Quite a sticky wicket for the Rabbinical councils…I’m Christian but this sort of stuff makes me even more glad I was able to do the “mom” thing the good old-fashioned way.
oops…my comment got cut off.
I was going to say that for years Judaism justified the definition of a Jew as someone with a Jewish mother (not father) as being “obvious” since a child imbibes his religious/cultural identify with his mother’s milk. It is the mother that is going to teach the young child its basic concepts in life. It was even argued that this went back to polygamous times when each multiple wife would have her own household in which she raised her own children. Obviously the Jewish wife would have a Jewish household while the pagan wife would introduce pagan gods and practices into her household.
Now we have a rabbi who says that it “makes sense” that the mother of the child is not the one who raises and nutures it, but the person whose DNA it shares. Seems to undercut the whole matrilinear thing. Not to mention that it absolutely makes Judaism a “genetic” religion notwithstanding that Judaism has always resisted this viewpoint.
This seems to define clearly a divide between religion and ethnicity. I doubt an ovum has religion. It may have ethnic markers, but in my world, those markers are irrelevant to virtually everything.
The pharisees have not changed their quibbling since Jesus’ day. I say this as a Jew.
Do you know the origin of the word proselyte? It was first used to describe a convert to Judaism. We’ve now become such an exclusive, silly little club that the concept of being a light to the nations is all but extinguished.
Born Jewish, I was told by my father that the reason for tracing Jewishness through the mother was because, throughout many centuries, pogroms (to use the Russian term) resulted in rape, and no one might know who or what the father was.
I thought it dated back to the prophet Ezra who told Jews to repudiate their non-Jewish wives and children to re-establish Judaism after the Exile.
The comment about conversion is useful here. I have Jewish neighbors. The wife was not Jewish at the time of the births of the children, and so they were taken to a rabbi to be converted and made Jews by prayers and a ritual washing. (“I told the rabbi, darned if it doesn’t feel like I’m having them baptized,” said Joe.) So this could be done for these children. However, for acceptance as Jews in Israel, as I understand their law, the conversion would have to be performed by an Orthodox rabbi, not a Conservative or Reform rabbi. In this sense my neighbor’s children still aren’t Jewish for Israeli purposes.
No. 6, would it matter who the father was, or the circumstances of conception, if the mother were Jewish?
#8: No.
I’m married to a gentile, but technically I could still count my children as Jewish (obviously, I don’t, since we haven’t had the circumcised and have brought them up as Christians).
NoVa, no, according to Orthodox tradition it doesn’t matter who the father is. As long as the mother is Jewish the children are considered Jewish. Sadly Judaism started out inclusive. Those born to Jewish fathers were Jewish (it’s the reason we have patriarchal genealogies in the Bible), and those who adhered to the Shema (“hear O Israel…”) were Jewish. Then, to cover the children of Jewish women who had been raped, a ruling was made that all those born of a Jewish woman were Jewish.
Now the “Mother” ruling is used to exclude those born to Jewish fathers, and we have extended it to exclude those born to Jewish mothers whose children have different genes. As long as we continue down this route we will be a dying religion.
Ex-Anglican Sue: why can’t your children be both Jewish and Christian? All the early followers were. The initial debates were not whether a Jew could also be a Christian, but whether a Gentile could be a Christian without also being a Jew.