Matrilineality in Judaism

The Book of Genesis describes the family of patriarchs and matriarchs who are the traditional ancestors of the Jewish people. Genesis describes three patriarchs of Israel: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and the four matriarchs of Israel: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah.

Cave of the Machpelah, believed to be the burial place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Leah.

The Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem. photo c. 1933

Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel and Leah were all family of Abraham. In the Jewish tradition, Bilhah and Zilpah were as well.[9] Sarah came from the same family as Abraham. According to Jewish tradition, Sarah was Abraham's niece, whose name is given elsewhere in Genesis as Iscah.[10]

Abraham fathered children with three wives or concubines: Sarah, Hagar, and Keturah.[11] The Jewish people (according to Genesis) is descended from Isaac (son of Sarah), but not from any of the sons of Abraham's other wives. In Genesis 21:13 God refers to Hagar's son as "the son of the maidservant" rather than "your [Avraham's] son"; later rabbinic sources deduce from this that a Jewish man's child is considered "his" child only if the mother is Jewish.[12]

Isaac married Rebekah, who came from the same family as Abraham.[13] Rebekah was Abraham's great niece through his brother, Nahor, and his great-great niece through Milcah, daughter of his brother, Haran.[14] They had Jacob and Esau.

Esau, Jacob's fraternal twin married two Hittite women (neither from the family of Abraham),[15] and a third woman was from the family of Ishmael.[16] Esau's offspring, the Edomites,[17] were considered non-Jewish.

Jacob, Isaac's other son, was married to Leah and Rachel,[18] who were Jacob's first cousins.[19] Rachel and Leah were both Abraham's great-great nieces and his great-great-great nieces. According to Jewish tradition, Bilhah and Zilpah, handmaidens of Rachel and Leah and the birth-mothers of four of the tribes, were Rachel and Leah's half-sisters. They had the same father as Rachel and Leah, but not the same mother.[20]

The Jewish People see themselves as descending from the three founding families of Israel.[21] The Matriarchs of Israel are the mothers of the Tribes of Israel; for those who adhere to Jewish Law, Israelite Nationhood or belonging to the Jewish People via descent exclusively follows the mother's line.[22]

The Torah has been interpreted to suggest that a brother and sister from the same mother are more closely related than a brother and sister from just the same father (Genesis 20:12 Rashi).

Moses married Zipporah, daughter of Jethro, Priest of Midian. They had two sons, Gershom and Eliezer,[23] both born before the Exodus.[24] The sons of Moses are absent from the genealogy of Levi in Exodus.[25] Moses married a Cushite woman (who, according to classical interpretations, may or may not refer to Zipporah).[26] The Torah makes no mention of any offspring from this union. The priesthood in Israel descends from Aaron, brother of Moses.[27]

Samson, from the tribe of Dan served as Judge of Israel for twenty years.[28] The reaction of Samson's parents to his desired marriage to a Philistine woman may indicate the cultural expectations in Israel regarding marriage at this time:

And his father and his mother said to him, “Is there no woman among the daughters of your brothers and among all of my people that you should go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?”… [29]

In the account of the Book of Judges, Samson married this woman and soon killed thirty Philistine men in Ashkelon.[30] (Samson's wife was then given to another man by her father who said that Samson utterly hated her.[31] Samson then set the fields of the Philistines on fire.[32] The Philistines then went and killed this woman and her father.[33])

In the accounts of the Prophets and Writings (which covers a time period of nearly a millennium) there are two cases of non-Israelite women who voluntarily (not resulting from conflict) married Israelites where their children were considered Israelite. According to the Talmud, both of these women, Ruth and Naamah, formally converted.[34]

Ruth came from the people of Moab, who descend from the older daughter of Lot.[35] (Lot was the son of Haran and the nephew of Abraham).[36] In the Book of Ruth, Naomi was the wife of Elimelech of Bethlehem, Judah. Due to famine in the land, Elimelech went with his family to live in Moab and then died.[37] Naomi's two sons married Moabite women, named Ruth and Orpah.[38] Naomi's two sons then died.[39] In a state of poverty and accompanied by her former daughter-in-law, Ruth the Moabitess,[40] Naomi journeyed back to Bethlehem, Judah.[41] Then in selling her late husband's land in Judah and the estates of her sons, Naomi set up the stipulation that her financial redeemer also marry her former daughter-in-law.[42] The first potential redeemer declined, lest this [marriage] ruin his inheritance.[43] Boaz, the next of kin, became Naomi's redeemer, married Ruth and became the father of Obed.[44]

And Naomi took the child and placed him in her bosom, and she became his nurse.[45] And the women neighbors gave him a name, saying, "A son has been born to Naomi," and they called his name Obed- he is the father of Jesse, the father of David.[46]

Naamah,[47] came from the people of Ammon who descend from the younger daughter of Lot.[48] Naamah married Solomon; their son Rehoboam was a Judean king of the Davidic Line.[49] Solomon loved many foreign women,[50] none of whom are mentioned by name in Jewish scripture other than Naamah.[51] Rehoboam is the only son of Solomon recorded in all Jewish scripture.[52] (Two daughters, Tafat bat-Shlomo and Basmat bat-Shlomo, are also mentioned.) [53]

The Jerusalem Talmud (c 400 CE) cites from the Book of Ezra (Ezra 10:3) as evidence of the law of matrilineal descent in Judaism.[54]

In the book of Ezra, Ezra the Scribe, (c 400 BCE) [55] returned to Judea from the Babylonian Exile with more than forty thousand Israelites to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.[56] Many of them had intermarried with non-Jewish women[57] and Ezra 9–10 tells the story of their renunciation of intermarriage and separation from the non-Jewish wives and from their children.[58] The necessity of separating from the children as well as the wives suggests that the children were not considered Jewish despite having Jewish fathers.

The medieval French commentator, Rashi (1040-1105 CE) in his commentary on Prophets references the law of matrilineal descent regarding Tamar, daughter of King David.[59] In the biblical account, Tamar attempted to persuade her half-brother Amnon not to rape her, by suggesting that he could legitimately marry her instead.[60] Although they were half siblings biologically, by law they were not related. Tamar's mother (at least at the time when she was conceived) was not Israelite, her mother was Maacah, daughter of Talmai king of Geshur.[61] According to what Tamar claimed in the record of Prophets, the law would disregard the biological fact that they shared a father.[24]

Orthodox Judaism maintains that the law of matrilineal descent in Judaism dates at least to the time of the covenant at Sinai (c. 1310 BCE).[3] This law was first codified in writing in the Mishna (c. 2nd century CE).[67] The Jewish oral tradition adduces the law of matrilineal descent from Deuteronomy, as explained by R. Yohanan in the Talmud:[68] “you shall not intermarry with them: you shall not give your daughter to his son, and you shall not take his daughter for your son. For he will turn away your son from following Me, and they will worship the gods of others…” Rabbi Yom Tov Asevilli breaks down the verse, by looking very closely and diacritically at the wording of the text: "...since he (the gentile father) will turn away your son (i.e. the child born to your Jewish daughter) from following me." Here, it is implied that God still reckons the child to be Jewish by calling him your son - even though such unions were forbidden.[69] The text calls him your son, implying that he is still an Israelite because he was born from a Jewish mother.[69] However, the opposite is not true. The Torah does not say, "...for she (the gentile mother) will turn away your son." In this case, the child would no longer be considered your son, but rather a gentile.[69][70] The Talmud (Yebamot 17a) then brings down an opinion which said that a child born from an Israelite mother and a non-Jewish father is something of an anomaly worthy of censure, and that the child is a non-Jew, based on a verse in the 5th chapter of Hosea: “They have betrayed Hashem, for they have begotten strange children.”

According to Maimonides in his Code of Jewish law,[71] the prohibition of marrying the Canaanites in Deuteronomy 7:3 refers not only to the seven nations of Canaan, but also to all other gentiles.

Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits, who served as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of England from 1967 to 1991, offers a possible reason for this law: “…the certainty of maternity must be set against the doubt of paternity, however small this doubt may be. In such cases Jewish law invariably invokes the rule “a doubt can never over-rule a certainty”.[72] Jakobovits also suggests a connection between the Jewish law of matrilineal descent and a mother's bond with her child. Jakobovits writes: “It was Eve who was called so “because she was the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20), whereas Adam was not named as “the father of all life”.[72] Jakobovits adds, “the determination of the child’s religious status by the mother may also indicate that she has the superior influence on the child’s religious development.” [73]

Orthodox Judaism follows matrilineal descent and holds that anyone with a Jewish mother also has irrevocable Jewish status; that even were such a Jew to convert to another religion, that person would still be considered Jewish by Jewish Law.

Rabbi Louis Jacobs, who was the founder of the Masorti (Conservative) Jewish Movement in Britain and a well-known theologian writes regarding his review of an article by Professor Cohen on matrilineal descent in Judaism:

There has been a development of the law in these instances from Biblical and pre-Rabbinic times. The attempt to find reasons for the change, however, has proved to be elusive and is quite unnecessary since it can be explained entirely economically by the logic of the law itself and is typical of Rabbinic thinking in general. But the development in the law had already taken place before the redaction of the Mishnah at the very latest. With the exception of the Rabbi in the Jerusalem Talmud (Qiddushin, 3:12) who permitted the child of a gentile mother and Jewish father to be circumcised on the Sabbath and whose opinion was vehemently rejected, the law is accepted unanimously in both Talmuds. It is recorded as the law in all the Codes without dissenting voice and has been the universal norm in all Jewish communities. For such a law to be changed, only the weightiest religious and ethical advantages will suffice and it is difficult indeed to discover any such in the change in this particular instance. To change this particular law would strike at the heart of the whole halakhic process and would involve a theological as well as an halakhic upheaval. And for what? The potential loss is great. The gains, if any, are few and the price is far too high.[1]

Shaye J. D. Cohen of Harvard University and formerly a Dean at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, questions the date of origin of matrilineal descent:

The preexilic portions of the Hebrew Bible are not familiar with the matrilineal principle. Numerous Israelite heroes and kings married foreign women; for example, Judah married a Canaanite, Joseph an Egyptian, Moses a Midianite and an Ethiopian, David a Philistine, and Solomon women of every description. Although Exod. 34:16 and Deut. 7:1-3 prohibit intermarriage only with the Canaanites, a prohibition that was supposed to have originated with the patriarchs Abraham (Gen. 24:3) and Isaac (Gen. 27:46-28:1), some Israelites extended the prohibition to include all foreigners (Judg. 14:3). But it never occurred to anyone in preexilic times to argue that such marriages were null and void. Marriage was the non- sacramental, private acquisition of a woman by a man, and the state had little or no legal standing in the matter. The foreign woman who married an Israelite husband was supposed to leave her gods in her father's house, but even if she did not, it never occurred to anyone to argue that her children were not Israelites. Since the idea of conversion to Judaism did not yet exist, it never occurred to anyone to demand that the foreign woman undergo some ritual to indicate her acceptance of the religion of Israel. The woman was joined to the house of Israel by being joined to her Israelite husband; the act of marriage was functionally equivalent to the later idea of conversion. In some circumstances biblical law and society did pay attention to maternal identity-the children of concubines and female slaves some- times rank lower than the children of wives-but it never occurred to anyone to impose any legal or social disabilities on the children of foreign women.[74]

In his review of Cohen's article, Rabbi Jacobs accepts that the law may have changed in the early Tannaitic period (circa 10-70 CE): "From the historical evidence marshalled by Professor Cohen it would appear that the change from the patrilineal to the matrilineal principle for the offspring of mixed unions of Jew and gentile took place in the early Tannaitic period."[1]

But Jacobs dismisses Cohen's suggestion that "the Tannaim were influenced by the Roman[75] legal system..."[1] and contends that "even if the Rabbis were familiar with the Roman law, they might have reacted to it [instead] by preserving the patrilineal principle, holding fast to their own system."[1]

Instead, Jacobs offers another explanation. Jacobs believes that an Israelite man who married a non-Israelite woman and had a child, that woman and child were considered not part of the "family clan" and therefore were not considered Israelite: "A child born of a Jewish father and a gentile mother cannot be given the status of the father since the patrilineal principle is stated only with regard to unions within the clan. How can the father who steps out of the clan bestow a clan status on the child whom he sires?"[1]

Therefore, Jacobs hypothesizes:

The child of a Jewish father and a gentile mother is not a gentile because of the application of any matrilineal principle...He is a child without Jewish parentage since the patrilineal principle cannot operate for a union carried out beyond the limits of the clan. The child is not a gentile because his mother is a gentile but because the only way a child can be born as a Jew is for him to have the Jewishness of his father transmitted to him and this cannot happen where the union is outside of the clan limits. Thus, for the Rabbis there is no switch here from a patrilineal to a matrilineal principle. The patrilineal principle still stands, only it cannot operate in this instance.[1]

The Ratner Center for the Study of Conservative Judaism conducted a survey of 1,617 members of 27 Conservative congregations in the U.S. and Canada in 1995.[76] 69% of respondents to the Ratner Center survey agreed that they would regard personally as a Jew anyone who was raised Jewish—even if their mother was Gentile and their father was Jewish (Wertheimer, 59). In this same survey, 29% of respondents indicated that they attended Jewish religious services twice a month or more and 13% that they engage in the study of a Jewish text once a month or more (Wertheimer, 55-57).

The Conservative Movement practices matrilineal descent. In 1986, the Conservative Movement's Rabbinical Assembly reiterated the commitment of the Conservative movement to the law of matrilineal descent. Furthermore, the movement stated that any rabbi who accepts the principle of patrilineal descent will be subject to expulsion from the Rabbinical Assembly. Still, the Conservative Movement affirmed that "sincere Jews by choice" should be warmly welcomed into the community and that "sensitivity should be shown to Jews who have intermarried and their families." The Conservative movement actively reaches out to intermarried families by offering them opportunities for Jewish growth and enrichment.

In 1983, the Central Conference of American Rabbis passed a resolution waiving the need for formal conversion for anyone with at least one Jewish parent who has made affirmative acts of Jewish identity. This departed from the traditional position requiring formal conversion to Judaism for children without a Jewish mother.[7] The 1983 resolution of the American Reform movement has had a mixed reception in Reform Jewish communities outside of the United States. Most notably, the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism has rejected patrilineal descent and requires formal conversion for anyone without a Jewish mother.[77] As well, a joint Orthodox, Traditional, Conservative and Reform Bet Din formed in Denver, Colorado to promote uniform standards for conversion to Judaism was dissolved in 1983, due to that Reform resolution.[78] However, in 2015 the majority of Britain's Assembly of Reform Rabbis voted in favor of a position paper proposing "that individuals who live a Jewish life, and who are patrilineally Jewish, can be welcomed into the Jewish community and confirmed as Jewish through an individual process."[79] Britain's Assembly of Reform Rabbis stated that rabbis "would be able to take local decisions – ratified by the Beit Din – confirming Jewish status."[79]

Other movements within the World Union for Progressive Judaism also adopted essentially the same position. These include: Liberal Judaism in England; Progressive Judaism in Australia; one congregation in Austria; some congregations in Eastern Europe. Note that Reform Judaism in Canada and England adopts a different position, similar to that of Conservative Judaism (though there may be an accelerated conversion process for the children of Jewish fathers).

Karaite Judaism does not accept Jewish Oral Law as definitive, believing that all divine commandments were recorded with their plain meaning in the written Torah. As such, they interpret the Hebrew Bible to indicate that Jewishness can only follow patrilineal descent. Karaite Judaism does not accept the authoritativeness of the Talmud or Jewish Oral Law.

The majority view in Karaite Judaism is that Jewish identity can only be transmitted by patrilineal descent[80][81][82] They argue that only patrilineal descent can transmit Jewish identity on the grounds that all descent in the Torah went according to the male line.[83] Only someone who is patrilineally Jewish (someone whose father's father was Jewish) is regarded as a Jew by the Mo'eṣet HaḤakhamim, or the Karaite Council of Sages based in Israel.

Reconstructionist Judaism, which values equity and inclusivity, was the first movement to adopt the idea of bilineal descent in 1968. According to Reconstructionist Judaism, children of one Jewish parent, of either gender, are considered Jewish if raised as Jews.

The State of Israel adheres to the Jewish law of matrilineal descent for matters which could affect Israeli family law.[84]

Seven marriage contracts that took place before the 13th century between Karaite and Rabbinic individuals have so far been discovered in the Cairo Genizah.[85] In the 12th century, approximately 25,000 Jews lived in Egypt, mostly in Cairo.[86] A percentage of the Jewish community was Karaite.[87] Moses Maimonides became one of the leaders of the Jewish community in Egypt shortly after his arrival there in 1165 CE. Jewish communities at this time including the Egyptian Jewish Community practiced matrilineal descent. In fact, Maimonides (1138-1204 CE) re-codified the law of matrilineal descent in his compilation of Jewish Law:

This is the general rule: The status of an offspring from a gentile man or from a gentile woman is the same as his mother's; we disregard the father.[88]

The Egyptian Jewish Karaites, however, followed patrilineal descent.[89] Still, these same 12th century Egyptian Karaites forbade marriage with non-Jews[90] and also did not allow converts into their community.[91] In effect then, 12th century Egyptian Karaites required that both parents be Jewish, but they referred to this requirement as patrilineal descent. Marriages between Karaites and the Rabbinic community came to a halt in the thirteenth century when Maimonides ruled for a specific serious reason that there was a problem with them.[92] This ruling also means that Maimonides considered the Karaites of the 12th century Egyptian Jewish community to be Jewish on their mother's side as well.

A 2013 Pew Research Center survey shows that American children of interfaith marriages are more likely to have been raised Jewish and identify as Jewish than in the past, which some scholars attribute to more welcoming and inclusive attitudes among Jewish organizations.[94] The increasing awareness and social validation of self-concept as defining one's identity may also be a contributing factor.

Studies have shown that American adults whose fathers are Jewish and whose mothers are not can readily identify lasting damage to their identity formation, family relations and faith due to patrilineal rejection, regardless of whether they were raised as Jews. Experiences include being singled out and made to feel unwelcome at Jewish events, sites and schools; pressure to disguise their heritage; being bullied or isolated; uncertainty regarding their personal identity; and narrowed access to a Jewish education and a community of faith.[95][96] Ironically, it's not uncommon for interfaith families and their offspring rejected by matrilineal devotees to simultaneously suffer external discrimination on the basis of being Jews. In recent years organizations like 18 Doors and Building Jewish Bridges have provided opportunities for families and individuals exiled by matrilineality to connect with each other and embrace their faith.

Most interfaith couples do not adopt Judaism.[97] Researcher Sergio DellaPergola attributes this in part to a tradition in English-speaking countries for children to adopt the mother's group identity.

Progressive scholars and writers including Elana Maryles Sztokman and Jessica Fishman view matrilineality as an outdated patriarchal form of control over women's bodies not unlike Islamic subjugation of women's rights. Fishman labels matrilineality a fundamental denial of the right of personhood.[98]