For many decades, Moment Magazine, one of the finest pluralistic American Jewish periodicals, has run an "Ask the Rabbis" section. There are usually around ten rabbis who participate representing the Jewish rabbinical spectrum from, well, me, to the very, very traditionally Orthodox.
A few weeks ago, I received their latest question: "Are there any beliefs or opinions that can disqualify you from being Jewish?"
I was tempted to just write, "No," and be done with it. As far as Humanistic Jews are concerned, that's the answer!
But I quickly remembered that I had agreed to answers of about 200 words. And while "no" may be our answer, I think they probably would benefit from some details.
My own journey to that straightforward answer began almost immediately after my own ordination as a Reform rabbi. As a very young (27!) rabbi at the University of Illinois' Hillel Foundation, I was preparing my first "Introduction to Judaism" class when I realized that I did not have a very good answer for the question of who, exactly, are the Jews. As days went by and the first session grew closer, I became more and more aware that there was no good answer. I already knew it couldn't be "religion" per se. The Reform Judaism in which I was raised certainly did not share the same belief system as the Chabad Orthodox rabbis who were getting ready to open their own campus center. From there, I ran through the other possibilities. Race? God, no. Ethnicity? Meh. Not really applicable if I were to include all the varieties of Jews I met when I studied in Israel. Culture? Nationality? Philosophy? Religion? No, no, no, and no.
When I began the lesson, I asked the class the same question. They couldn't agree either. But we did find something we "kinda, sorta" agreed upon. The Jews, we could all concur, are a family.
Years later, when I encountered an article on the exact same topic--dated over thirty years earlier-‑by Rabbi Wine, I discovered that he had run through just about the very same suggestions and revealed just about the same problems with each definition. And he had also landed on family. Jews are a big international family. Here's how he concluded his article:
From "The Philosophy of Humanistic Judaism: Part II,"
Humanistic Judaism Magazine, Spring, 1969:
Familial ties are never trivial. From the view of childhood conditioning, they make theological propositions and moral slogans look powerless. The question is: are they beneficial? If they become fearful obsessions with family survival, defensive apologies for group superiority, they do great harm. If, on the contrary, they sponsor a happy wedding of sentiment and individual integrity, they can be vehicles of immense social good.
In the years that followed that article, he and others expanded the definition of family to include examples of our familial ties. I shared that updated definition of family at the very end of my 200-word or so answer to Moment Magazine:
For a small people that has engaged in minimal recruitment, Jews have developed quite a few criteria about who is considered Jewish. The Rabbis maintained that a Jew is a righteous convert or the child of a Jewish mother. Apostasy merited punishments including exclusion from the community. Yet the biological criterion implied that even excommunication was not absolute; apostates repent and return.
Rabbi Sherwin Wine, founder of Humanistic Judaism, once noted that for Zionists, "even atheists, practitioners of yoga, and believers in reincarnation and astrology are Jews so long as they identify with and participate in Jewish national aspirations." Humanistic Judaism itself further illustrated that even synagogues and rabbis could exist within a Jewish context devoid of God.
During a Federation workshop I attended that addressed our question, the only agreed-upon exclusion was of Messianic Jews, due to their belief in a false messiah. I raised an objection: if belief in a false messiah is disqualifying, what of those Chabadniks who continue to view their dead Rebbe as mashiach (messiah)? My question went unanswered. Decades ago, Humanistic Judaism wisely eliminated belief criteria, defining a Jew as "anyone who identifies with the history, culture and fate of the Jewish people."
The issue should be out this summer.