Who has the right, or authority, to bestow Jewish identity on someone?

In the last of his series, CLIVE LAWTON asks whether, in a time of shrinking Jewish populations, we can afford to allow draconian gatekeepers to turn away those who want to join the tribe

I HAVE OFTEN said that being a Jew is a bit like being male or female. For most people, what you’re born as is a given, but then you might spend the rest of your life deciding how you want to do it. Society provides us a few good templates but each of us develops our way of doing male or female, sometimes happily, sometimes resentfully, and occasionally with a sense of utter rejection.

Even contemporary controversies concerning whether trans people can choose their sex do not undermine my parallel. Some say of trans people: “just because you say you’re a man (or a woman) doesn’t make you one”. But who has the right, or the authority, to bestow such identity?

And the same is true for Jews.

There is one definition of a Jew which I think no-one disputes. Pop out of an indisputably Jewish womb and there you are – Jewish. Jewish mother - Jewish child. Done!

But the story becomes muddy when we consider those with Jewish fathers only.

Most Progressive Jewish streams accept someone as Jewish who has a Jewish father and has been brought up to think of themselves as Jewish in a Jewish milieu; what has become known as “patrilineal descent”. This inclusion of this group, traditionally not allowed to identify as Jews, fits the Progressive Jewish reluctance to see Jews as primarily a tribal clan.

The culture, tradition and faith are as important in the Progressive Jewish view, so it seems absurd to them that someone who is brought up with a Jewish consciousness and identity should be rejected because of the sex of their Jewish parent. (The position is even further reinforced when one remembers the general desire of Progressive Jews to resist any differentiation between the sexes on all Jewish matters.)

Such a position is not accepted in Halakha. Only mothers count - though there is a little-known halakhic position (which is entirely respectable) which accepts that someone with a Jewish father only is a little closer to being Jewish and might therefore be treated more leniently or welcomingly in matters of conversion compared to their counterpart who has non-Jewish parents.