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Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!dave
From: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (Dave Sherman)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Who is a Jew.
Message-ID: <4935@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 17-Jul-84 14:04:39 EDT
Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.4935
Posted: Tue Jul 17 14:04:39 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 17-Jul-84 14:24:23 EDT
References: <276@homxa.UUCP>  <1330@ucbvax.UUCP> <2979@rabbit.UUCP>
Reply-To: dave@utcsrgv.UUCP (& Sherman)
Organization: The Law Society of Upper Canada, Toronto
Lines: 25

In article <2979@rabbit.UUCP> jgw@rabbit.UUCP (Jay G. Wilpon) writes:
~| The original reason for considering a child of a Jewish
~| mother Jewish and not a Jewish father, was that you always
~| knew who the mother was (ie. Jewish), but were never 100% sure
~| who the father was.

Really? Can you quote a halachic source (e.g., Talmud, Mishnah)
for this claim? I think not.

The reason that Judaism is inherited from the mother and not the
father is because that is the definition of Judaism. Rationalizations
of the reasons for halachah are largely irrelevant to the status
of the halachah, and should not be used to change it.

Whether the father can be genetically proven to be the father today
is totally irrelevant to the definition of a Jew. Judaism, as
practised for millenia, has only one definition: "born of a Jewish
mother, or converted in accordance with halachah".

Dave Sherman
Toronto
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