Can You Prove You’re a Jew? American Jews’ Religious Status in Israel

• In Event: Jewish Religious Authority in America and in Global Context

Abstract

What does it take to demonstrably prove that you are a Jew? This paper will examine the relationship between Jewishness in the United States and the state of Israel through the challenges that some American Jews face in “authenticating” their Jewish status in Israel. In doing so, it will consider both the historical developments of different definitions of Jewishness as well as present a theoretical model to consider the state’s claim to the power to determine and authenticate self-identity. Moreover, this case study will allow us to consider how American Jews have developed their particular perspective on the relationship between church and state, and how this is applied when they encounter a very different reality in the state of Israel.

To consider these issues, the paper will look at the formulation and implementation of Israel’s Law of Return (1950), and how a combination of American rabbinic figures alongside state documents help “prove” Jewishness in Israel in its various forms. In this framework, Jewishness is not about internal belief or external practice, but about holding documentation that satisfies the sometimes-arcane bureaucracies of Israel’s Interior Ministry and also pseudo-state institutions like the Jewish Agency and state Rabbinate. The paper will thus consider differing models for “proving” that one is a Jew in both the United States and Israel, and what it means in terms of the differing forms of construction of self-identity in these two major contexts. It will consider the role of the state, both in the United States and Israel, in providing and authenticating documentation that proves one’s self-identity.

As some definitions of Jewishness diverge from traditional halakhic formulations, like in the case of American Jewish movements that accept patrilineal descent and Israel’s law of return which defines Jewishness for the purpose of immigration according to having one Jewish grandparent, who can count as a Jew in different contexts becomes a complicated matter indeed. We can also look to services like 23andme which offer entirely novel frameworks to determine a person’s ethnic background. In this context, the paper will consider the nature of religious status in the United States and Israel, and the contest over the powers of the state to play a role in such a process.

Author

• Jason Lustig, University of Texas at Austin