This article, on the surface, sounds very reasonable, and does seem to be written by someone who is at very least somewhat versed in the genetic history of the Jewish people. This is more than can be said for some people whom the author of this article even has the good sense to call out. However, that does not absolve the article of its brazen dismissiveness of Jewish ethnicity – a position that it defends through the use of fallacy, principally (though not exclusively) the Straw Man fallacy.
The very main straw man in the article is featured in its title, though often reiterated throughout the text of an article itself. It attempts to frame the discussion as being about whether or not Jews are a “race”. The problem with this is, no credible person that I know of advances the notion that Jews are a race. Those who discuss Jewish ethnicity do not generally identify this ethnicity as a race, but as a smaller ethnic group. Ethnic Jews are Middle Eastern, Levantine to be specific. That means that we are the same race as the Lebanese, and more broadly, the same race as Arabs. The idea of Ethnic Jews being a race unto ourselves is a complete, unmitigated straw man.
The article also discusses the existence of people with ethnically Jewish DNA, as well as certain groups (both recent converts, and a few entire communities of Jews such as the Bnei Menashe of India) who do not genetically appear to be Jewish but who are nonetheless part of the Jewish tribe. For starters, this is a straw man because most people who discuss Jewish ethnicity (in this case, “most” being an understatement) do not deny that there is also a such thing as Jewish tribal identity, but merely claim that ethnic Jewish identity is also a valid thing.
The most egregious straw man is when the author says “After all, if your ancestry is from Europe, there’s about a 90% chance of some Jewish DNA turning up in there. That’s due to the many Jews over the ages who were forcibly converted, or simply left the fold due to the hardships involved.” This is such a blatant straw man because (while a few outliers on the fringes are always a possibility) generally speaking, advocates of Jewish ethnicity are not referring to people who have just a small, trace amount of Jewish DNA. We are referring to those of us for whom it is a significant part of our ethnic background.
But there is one more problem with completely dismissing Jewish ethnicity and treating tribal affiliation as the one and only valid usage of the term “Jew” and that is the question of who is and who isn’t a Jew in the tribal sense of the word. The article attempts to present this question as one whose answer is clear cut – but in reality, it is one of those things for which for every two Jews there are three opinions.
For example, let us assume that a Jewish woman adopts a child whose biological parents are not Jewish. Does the adoption fulfil the requirement of the child having a Jewish mother and therefore qualifying as part of the tribe due to matrilineal descent? I highly doubt that all Jews will give the same answer to that question. Or what about the reverse – a non-Jewish mother adopting a child whose biological parents are Jewish?
Then there is the issue of converts. Does a conversion overseen by a Masorti (a.k.a. “Conservative”) Rabbi count as a valid conversion? What if it is overseen by a Reform Rabbi? This is a subject matter that is very hotly contested in the modern Jewish community, especially in Israel where someone’s immigration status could very well hinge on that question. As a matter of fact, there are even cases of Rabbis from some Orthodox Jewish groups not recognizing conversion overseen by Rabbis from other Orthodox Jewish groups.
But back to the issue of matrilineal descent – even that view is far from unanimous. It is pretty much a view held in both Orthodox and Masorti Judaism (both of which are sub-groups of Rabbinical Judaism) but Reform Jews are not so strong on that. If a child has one Jewish parent and one non-Jewish parent, what Reform Judaism cares about isn’t whether the Jewish parent is the mother or the father, but about whether or not there is the intent to raise the child as a Jew.
Not to mention that Karaitism (which has every bit as much claim to being seen as a valid Jewish religion as does Rabinicalism) completely rejects matrilineal descent and cares only about patrilineal descent. By their reckoning, your Jewishness depends only on whether or not your father is Jewish, and it does not matter whether or not your mother is.
This is not to say that there are no grey areas where Jewish ethnicity is concerned – but those grey areas pale in comparison to the areas of potential disagreement as to who does or does not have a part in Jewish tribal identity. But more importantly, I don’t know of any proponent of ethnic Jewish identity who wishes to be dismissive of Jewish tribal identity. The article, however, embodies an attitude that is way too prevalent among many religious Jews of being extremely dismissive of ethnic Jewish identity.
It is high time that that dismissive attitude finally be put to rest.
