one of the most consequential questions in jewish  history is a very basic one who is a jew now you  

might think that this is a settled law that there  is really no question about it but in fact when  

you look a little more deeply at jewish history  you see that there are several periods in history  

when it becomes a very important question for the  vast majority of jewish history in particular the  

last two millennia most jews have regarded a jew  as someone who has a jewish mother that is it is  

matrilineal the nominal identity of a person  follows that personal status regardless of  

affiliation with a religion or self-identification  but that has not always been the universal case  

for jewish history what i'd like to do today  is focus on this question as we introduce the  

question of women in ancient israel in general  now let us recall that this is certainly a  

controversial question as of the late 20th and  early 21st century and this is primarily because  

of a decision that was made by the reform movement  in 1983 that recognized patrilineal descent  

more precisely it's it's both matrilineal  and patriarchal descent but in other words  

uh this represented an acknowledgement by a major  jewish movement that as long as one parent was  

ethnically jewish however you define that  jewishness then the child could also be jewish  

there's more to it than that and perhaps one  of the most important things to think about is  

you know did this decision um you know initiate  change or was it simply a recognition of change  

that had already happened because um intermarriage  especially in american jewry was was at such a  

high level that we already have the phenomenon  of children who have like a jewish father rather  

than a jewish mother and wish to identify with the  jewish community and they find that they are shut  

out because the matrilineal principle has been the  dominant one for the last two thousand years and  

it's resulted in a lot of really painful moments  for example in this article by shoshana tikva  

written in 2019. it's a very difficult and  personal issue in this particular video i mainly  

intend to just go over the historical issues and  i will leave the philosophical and religious and  

indeed sociological and even psychological issues  to people who are more expert so the question that  

we really have is you know when did the  matrilineal status become effective or when  

did it become the norm we can see when you read  the bible it's very clear uh two things first  

of all there is a strong prohibition very you  know clearly worded uh against intermarriage  

with canaanites in particular but one can  easily generalize that it refers to you know  

intermarriage in general and at the same time  you see in particular some really important  

figures like joseph and moses and solomon who all  apparently marry non-jewish women so how do you  

square these things and by the way of course  joseph moses and solomon's their children are  

recognized as being jewish how is this the case  so we're going to go into some of the major issues  

here but i want to point out that perhaps the most  significant study of this is by shia jd cohen the  

beginnings of jewishness which he he goes through  a lot of really important issues in the classical  

period especially issues of conversion and issues  of matrilineal versus patrilineal descent and so  

on now i don't necessarily agree with all  of his conclusions but there's no question  

it's a masterful survey of the sources and  there's a lot of value in this particular work  

so trying to square this conundrum of on the  one hand we have this long-standing practice of  

matrilineal descent and on the other hand we have  these biblical examples that seem to contradict it  

there are three logical ways to approach the  challenge the first is to say that well let's  

say the law of matrilineal descent this concept  of principle was not always described in the text  

meaning that yeah moses married a midnight but  the midianite woman went through a conversion and  

joseph married you know an egyptian woman but she  went through a conversion if that is the case then  

you have to wonder well why doesn't the text tell  us this why doesn't the torah reveal that this  

is in fact what happened wouldn't we be prone  to be misunderstanding the text if it doesn't  

say something which actually happened that's  one possibility another logical possibility to  

say that yes the law was always in effect uh the  jews always adhered to this matrilineal principle  

but it was sometimes ignored you know you have  that sometimes where uh as rabbi barrow wine often  

likes to say you should never confuse judaism  with jews right jews do not necessarily behave  

in normative acceptable ways so perhaps you know  the examples we have in the bible are you know not  

in conformity with the way jews are supposed to  behave now that would be obviously an acceptable  

answer except the fact that you know these figures  moses joseph solomon and others you know they're  

really important people and are we really going to  uh assert that they were behaving contrary to law  

that's definitely problematic there's also a  smaller problem which we won't go into right now  

but the midrash has a principle that even before  the torah was given uh jews of that level at any  

rate uh certainly behaved in conformity with the  torah itself like for example the laws of keeping  

kosher were not given until the torah was given  but you still wouldn't have the the patriarchal  

matrix going out for non-kosher food god forbid  that kind of thing but that's a smaller problem  

let's just avoid that for now the third logical  possibility is that maybe the law wasn't always  

in effect uh maybe the law of uh matrilineal  descent or the principle of matrilineal descent  

was introduced later in jewish history which would  mean that the the earlier biblical figures who  

followed apparently a patrilineal principle were  not contravening the law again there's that small  

midrashic objection which is reasonable but not  for us today but if that is the case that we say  

the law was not necessarily in effect when did  it change so that's the the three possibilities  

let's look at them in turn but let's look start  from the basic one let's say when's the first  

unequivocal statement of this principle so  the first one of course is the torah itself  

and here's one classic passage uh it's in the book  of deuteronomy devarim chapter 7 verse 4. so verse  

3 says do not intermarry with them meaning the  surrounding non-jewish nations do not give your  

daughters to the sons or take their daughters  for your sons and then in verse four it says

the abdu's

right now let's look at the translation it says  for they will turn your children away from me to  

worship other gods and the lord's anger will  braze forth against you and he will promptly  

wipe you out right really strong uh word  of criticism i think the problem with this  

particular passage and normally safaria is amazing  but you know they're relying on translations that  

in many cases are already extant and this  translation is a little bit of a distortion  

if we look carefully at the english it's not for  they which is in the third person plural it really  

should be for he right the the uh word in hebrew  is ki yasir which is male masculine singular  

uh for it's really he will turn your children  now your children is also not in the plural  

it should be uh in the singular masculine for your  son which in this context would mean your grandson  

wait so let's understand this properly it says  for he meaning your son-in-law it can't be your  

daughter-in-law because it would say for she  it would put it in the feminine and by the way  

in hebrew there is no neuter gender every single  noun or pronoun has to be either male or female so  

it's binary here there's no other choice  and it is masculine so this means that if  

you have to imagine yourself as a grandparent  if your uh daughter marries a non-jewish male  

if you as a jewish person have a daughter who  is jewish and she marries a non-jewish male  

the non-jewish male according to this verse  will turn your son which is your grandson  

away from god that's the statement of the  verse here let's look at it in the commentary  

of rashi i have it abbreviated on the right  here but let's look at it in greater detail  

so rashi here is quoting the talmud  tractate yvonne 23a and it reads like this  

high i.e the son of the heathen meaning the  non-jew when he marries thy daughter will turn  

away thy grandson whom thy daughter will bear unto  him from following me are you following god this  

teaches us that thy daughter's son who was born  of a non-jewish father is still called your son  

but your son's son who was born of a non-jewish  woman is not called your son right because the  

verse only talks about the situation in which  your grandson by your non-jewish son-in-law would  

go away from god it does not even bother  talking about your grandson from your non-jewish  

daughter-in-law because according to rashi quoting  the talmud that person that grandchild is not even  

jewish that's the clearest biblical statement of  the matrilineal principle and as you can see it's  

not explicit at all it has to be drawn out through  this midrash which is expressed in the talmud and  

expressed uh later in rashi's commentary so that's  how the the principle is derived now that's the  

now if we take this from a theological perspective  at the very least the matrilineal principle then  

is put in place in the uh period of the  giving of the torah which is obviously  

quite ancient we're now talking about the exodus  period and would have been you know the the norm  

all through ancient judea but when we look at  the historical data it's a little more confusing  

so by the way here's a beautiful painting by  anna flarovna she has so many of these studies of  

women lighting candles with their children looking  on very kind of traditional romanticist kind of  

view but really very powerful she just passed away  in 2020 but very you know beautiful work still  

available for sale in many galleries today at any  rate um the we see a uh a biblical narrative that  

describes how this was actually put into place  you'll recall that in the 6th century the jews  

are exiled by nebuchadnezzar in the year 586  and then they return within a few decades from  

persia from babylonia to israel under ezra and  in chapter 9 of the book of ezra he laments the  

long prayer there where he he expresses tremendous  regret that so many of the jews that returned have  

brought with them their non-jewish spouses meaning  that intermarriage is rampant then in chapter 10  

one shachanya benifil of elam sends away the  foreign wives and their children he does not or  

doesn't mention what he does with the foreign men  that is the the the jewish men who have married  

non-jewish wives their families are broken up and  the wives are sent away along with their children  

uh which seems to be a it's you can imagine how  how difficult this might have been and how harsh  

it must have been but you know beyond the sympathy  for the human drama involved it seems like a very  

clear statement of the matrilineal principle in  effect in the sixth century before the common era  

now that would that would be a clear illustration  of it however as dr cohen points out when you go  

700 years later and you look at non-rabbinic  texts such as the jewish philosopher philo who  

we'll speak about in in a few weeks god willing  josephus who we spoke about extensively and even  

paul and you have to understand that in some  cases in some ways the uh the new testament uh the  

christian writings are kind of like a historical  commentary on jewish society as well so it's very  

useful to kind of like flesh out what's going  on in the first century in some ways at any rate  

all these three important figures and sources  they seem unaware of the matrilineal principle  

you know you have to look in dr cohen's book  to see the specific examples but it seems  

pretty clear that they're they're clueless  about this to give you one example josephus  

you know he speaks about king herod herod the  great and uh he goes on and on about how herod's  

own pedigree is questioned by the jewish community  he's called the idomian he's called the half jew  

because his father came from the idumean people  who had been forcibly converted prior to this  

uh in the era of the maccabees the heir of the  hashmoniem under john hierkonos in particular  

so in other words because his father descended  from a people that had a questionable conversion  

there are doubts about herod's own jewish identity  but no one seems to be bothered by the fact  

that his mother wasn't jewish his mother was an  arab woman so what's going on it's like totally  

you know not relevant their mother so now there  are ways you can approach this you can say that  

josephus is not necessarily the best you know  exemplar of rabbinic judaism at all and it could  

be that only the pharisees were really observing  this kind of level of observance that that became  

normative what dr cohen argues is that in reality  the whole institution of conversion had not really  

coalesced by this time uh and that there was  kind of like a different standard for women  

marrying jewish men that their marriage itself  constituted the understanding of conversion in  

that era fascinating argument whereas men if they  wanted to convert into judaism required a much  

more you know complex process which involved  among other things circumcision so that's why  

when men would marry into herod's family then  there was a whole big deal about you know yeah  

they went through this and they they had to  con they had the circumcision and so on uh but  

there's no discussion of when non-jewish women are  incorporated into that dynasty for certain however  

by the time you get to the mishnah which is about  the turn of the year 200 about the turn of the  

third century there's no question that rabbinic  judaism is absolutely down with the idea of the  

matrilineal principle reaffirming what we  saw in rashi quoting the talmud which the  

talmud of course is not going to be written  until quite a bit later but the idea is that  

matrilineal principle is very very strong in the  rabbinic tradition certainly from the mishnah  

and onwards and again a little theological note  here from the perspective of orthodox judaism  

the mishna although it only achieves a written  form with yehuda nasi around the year 200-220  

it was the embodiment of oral teachings that went  back far earlier and in fact the core teachings  

of the mishnah go back to mount sinai itself  which corresponds with the way the talmud read  

principle that can arguably be extended all  the way back to mount sinai through a pharisaic  

interpretation of the texts when we look at the  actual behavior of jews we see that they're not  

always conforming to this matrilineal principle  sometimes at great cost to themselves as we see  

in the book of ezra and that even by the first  century of the common era some very prominent  

jews seem to be out of touch with the matrilineal  principle but by the time the mishna is codified  

uh this becomes the dominant view without question  overwhelmingly so and any uh deviations from this  

be are taken in a very serious way i should  mention one last caveat that i think is a  

very important one uh we started by talking about  how basic this question was and one of the things  

that we tend to see in jewish history is that  you know jews can handle a tremendous degree of  

descent there's room for a lot of diverse opinion  within the large you know tent of jewish identity  

but this particular question of whether or not  a person is jewish is one of those third rail  

type questions that tends to result in fissures in  schisms and when it remains unresolved it has very  

dire consequences for the integrity of the larger  jewish population but i leave that for people who  

are you know expert dealing with this i hope  you found this short video useful and we're  

going to continue with our discussion of women  in ancient israel next thank you for watching