The Perils of a State Based on Race

One of the problems of states based on race is that you have to draw the line somewhere.  If not then just about anybody could belong to the herrenvolk.  And when membership of the master-race involves the acquisition of privileges it is particularly important to accurately define who is and who is not a member of said group.

This is Israel’s dilemma.  Israel is a self-proclaimed Jewish state, which in practice means that Jews in Israel are privileged in a way in which, if the situation were reversed in non-Jewish countries, there would be loud and persistent cries of anti-Semitism and quite rightly.

In Israel there are two classes of Jews.  Those who are admitted to Israel under the Law of Return, which defines who is a Jew very widely.  Like the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany you are Jewish if you have a Jewish grandparent or if you are married to someone who is Jewish or you are the child of parents, only one of whom is Jewish.  But if you want to get married, divorce or die then you have to be the child of a Jewish mother.  A Jewish father is simply not good enough because it is the woman who gives birth and if that woman isn’t Jewish then neither is the child Jewish.

Of course it creates certain problems such as the fact that hundreds of thousand of Jews cannot now marry in Israel. 

Sad isn’t it?

Rabbinate's Strict Rules Bar 660K Jews From Marrying in Israel

Prohibitions on civil and non-Orthodox weddings in Israel prevent 660,000 Jewish-Israelis — including 364,000 immigrants from the former Soviet Union — from marrying in the Jewish state, according to a nonprofit promoting religious freedom in Israel.

Hiddush presented the information in a report Monday to a Knesset conference on “alternatives to marriage through the [Chief] Rabbinate,” according to a news release the group issued Monday. It also reported that 20 percent of weddings registered in Israel took place overseas — a way of circumventing the prohibition on non-Orthodox weddings stateside — and that 70 percent of secular Israelis say they would have non-Orthodox wedding ceremonies if the state permitted them.

Maral Malka, a Jewess, had to convert to Islam to marry an Israeli Palestinian - Israeli fascists demonstrated outside the wedding ceremony against this 'loss' to the Jewish race

The nonprofit attributed its statistics to opinion polls and Israel Central Bureau of Statistics data.

Rabbi Uri Regev, who heads Hiddush, told the Knesset conference that growing numbers of Israelis “wish to be free of the Rabbinate’s shackles” and that the “monopoly of the Rabbinate” hurts Judaism because it “leads the general public to hate Judaism and identify it with dark, ugly extremism.”

An Orthodox Jewish Marriage Ceremony

In addition to many immigrants, those unable to wed in Israel because civil and non-Orthodox Jewish weddings performed there are not legally recognized include 284,000 gays and lesbians, 13,000 non-Orthodox converts to Judaism and various others, according to Hiddush.

A poll conducted for the group found that 64 percent of Jewish-Israelis supports “official recognition of all types of marriage,” including same-sex partnerships.

Hiddush reported that only 45 countries in the world, most of them Muslim, have marriage policies as restrictive as Israel’s.