One day last fall, a young Israeli woman named Sharon went with her fianc\u00c3\u00a9 to the Tel Aviv Rabbinate to register to marry. They are not religious, but there is no civil marriage in Israel. The rabbinate, a government bureaucracy, has a monopoly on tying the knot between Jews. The last thing Sharon expected to be told that morning was that she would have to prove \u201d\u201d before a rabbinic court, no less \u201d\u201d that she was Jewish. It made as much sense as someone doubting she was Sharon, telling her that the name written in her blue government-issue ID card was irrelevant, asking her to prove that she was she.<\/p>\n
Sharon is a small woman in her late 30s with shoulder-length brown hair. For privacy\u2019s sake, she prefers to be identified by only her first name. She grew up on a kibbutz when kids were still raised in communal children\u2019s houses. She has two brothers who served in Israeli combat units. She loved the green and quiet of the kibbutz but was bored, and after her own military service she moved to the big city, which is the standard kibbutz story. Now she is a Tel Aviv professional with a master\u2019s degree, a job with a major H.M.O. and a partner \u201d\u201d when this story starts, a fianc\u00c3\u00a9 \u201d\u201d who is \u201cin computers.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
This stereotypical biography did not help her any more at the rabbinate than the line on her birth certificate listing her nationality as Jewish. Proving you are Jewish to Israel\u2019s state rabbinate can be difficult, it turns out, especially if you came to Israel from the United States \u201d\u201d or, as in Sharon\u2019s case, if your mother did.<\/p>\n