Who is a Jew?
by Dr. Joseph Davis

The mother of Senator George Allen, it was recently reported, grew up in a Jewish family in Tunisia. Is Senator Allen Jewish?

There is a notorious on-going debate about who is a Jew. What sort of group are the Jews? A religion? An ethnicity? Are some people “more Jewish” than others? How about Jews who are believing Christians, such my grandmother, or such as Senator Allen?

I am more and more convinced that two notions will cut through some of the confusion that surrounds these issues. The first notion is the griffon. The second is Wittgenstein’s concept of a “family resemblance.” (I cribbed this actually from Umberto Eco’s essay, Ur-Fascism.)

The griffon: a mythological animal, half-eagle, half-lion. Is the griffon (I ask) a bird or a mammal ? Both, obviously, or neither.

The Jews are part-religion, part-ethnicity. They have, so to speak, the body of a religion attached to the head of an ethnic group. Like the griffon, (or, if you don’t like mythology, like the platypus) Jews defy heavy-handed attempts at categorization. One may be a Jew religiously, ethnically, or both.

But can you be a Jew if you are neither religiously nor ethnically Jewish? Perhaps you can, as we learn from the Austrian-English philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. (Some gossip: both of Wittgenstein’s father’s parents were born Jewish.)

Wittgenstein’s suggestion is this: a group may be defined by many characteristics, of which only a fraction are necessary to establish membership. Any ten out of twelve, or any six out of eighty-five, might get you in.

Not all Jews have Jewish ancestors or Jewish families. Not all observe Judaism. Most Jews are not Christians; most are not Arabs. Many live in Paramus. Some are named Sheldon or Sadie, and a few went with me to Camp Tikvah. Being Jewish is a “family resemblance,” comprised of many overlapping elements.

Where this notion leads, however, somewhat controversially, is towards the conclusion that some people in this sense are more “Jewish” than others. Sheldon who lives in Paramus might be “more Jewish” than Julio who lives in Patagonia.

This common-sense notion of being Jewish is quite different, let me hasten to point out, from a halakhic definition. Legal systems – any system of rules at all, such as Israeli law or synagogue rules – will shun grey or mixed categories, and demand yes-or-no answers. Ball or strike? Innocent or guilty? Jew or Gentile? No semi-strikes, no quasi-Jews. No one is “more Jewish” than anyone else. You either are or you aren’t. (Inevitably, in such a system, one will frequently argue with the umpire over the call.) But legal definitions and common-sense notions are often at odds. The Vatican City is not technically part of Rome. Canada is technically a monarchy. City Line Avenue, near my house, is technically an interstate highway.

And actually, if we follow Wittgenstein, it gets better, although a little more complicated.

Take forks, for example. Table forks, fish forks, pitchforks, tuning forks, forks in roads. They all have something in common (tines or branches) – a good, well-behaved group at first sight. But what if you break the tines off of a plastic fork? Is it still a fork? In some sense it is, and Wittgenstein explains why. Broken plastic forks are quite similar to new plastic forks. Plastic forks in turn resemble metal forks, which in turn resemble tuning forks, and so on.

One of my neighbors in Bala Cynwyd is my cousin’s cousin’s cousin. (Small world.) My cousins are not his cousins, but they are related. Are we family? For Wittgenstein, we are family.

There are many ways of being Jewish, each one linked to the others. Paramus is not the only Jewish place, nor Tikvah the only Jewish camp. Julio might (or might not) be a very Jewish name in Patagonia.

To limit ourselves to black-and-white definitions is to court confusion and needless rancor. Halakhically, Senator Allen is either a Jew (because of his mother) or a non-Jew (because he is a Christian). In a common-sense, Wittgensteinian way, though, he is “not very Jewish.” There are many characteristics of Jewishness – more than eighty – and also many indeterminable degrees of being Jewish. There are also many ways of being quasi-Jewish or little bit Jewish. Senator Allen is technically (maybe) a Jew, but (presumably) not very Jewish at all. Ludwig Wittgenstein was technically (presumably) not a Jew, but (maybe) quite Jewish indeed.

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