Halakhah к Бамидбар 19:3

Advocacy of the position that the Jewish identity of either parent is sufficient to confer status as a Jew upon the child is, to a great extent, a product of the pressure generated by intermarried parents who have immigrated to Israel and seek recognition of their children as Jews on the part of the Israeli government. The landmark cases in this area are analyzed in detail in a work aptly titled The Impossible Dilemma (New York, 1976) by Oscar Kraines. In an article which appeared in the Summer 1976 issue of Conservative Judaism, Solomon Goldfarb called for what he candidly termed "a revolutionary change in the law" and a "daring interpretation of the law of conversion" in order to effect the desired recognition of the children of Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers as Jews. This proposal, which received widespread coverage in the Anglo-Jewish press, calls for an innovation which is halakhically indefensible. The Palestinian Talmud, Kiddushin 3:12 (and not only the less authoritative Midrash Rabbah, Numbers 19:3, quoted by Goldfarb), does discuss the admissibility of such a view only to reject it peremptorily by pointing to Ezra's insistence upon casting aside not only non-Jewish wives but their children as well. Ezra's rejection of the children of Jewish fathers born of non-Jewish wives is a clear indication of the gentile status of such children. To seize upon random views explicitly refuted in the Talmud itself and rejected by Jewish tradition over the centuries is to make a travesty of the halakhic process.

Rabbinic exegesis regards the phrase "For he will turn thy son from following Me" as descriptive rather than predictive. The verse serves to establish a legal principle rather than as a biblical prognostication. The child of a Jewish male born of the daughter of a gentile is ipso facto turned from "following Me" because his status is that of a gentile who is not obliged to serve God by observing the commandments of the Torah. This interpretation is not simply an Oral Law tradition recorded by the Sages of the Talmud; it was known to, and accepted by, Ezra. In demanding that children of such unions be excluded from the Jewish faith-community Ezra declared, "And let it be done according to the Torah." Clearly, Ezra recognized the principle of matrilineal identity as being firmly rooted in the verses of the Pentateuch. It is noteworthy that when this was pointed out to Jacob of Naburaya he candidly conceded the argument and expressed relief at being preserved from causing others to accept an errant view and to commit the serious transgression involved in the circumcision of a gentile child on the Sabbath. A similar narrative, identical in all salient points, is found in Midrash Rabbah, Numbers 19:3.