ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 6, 1997 TAG: 9704040023
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: the back pew
SOURCE: CODY LOWE
As we approach the annual observance of Passover, which begins at sundown April 21, perhaps it is a fitting time to consider the question of "just who is a Jew?"
Answering that question is not as easy as the dictionary might have you suppose:
"1. A person descended, or regarded as descended, from the ancient Hebrews of biblical times. 2. A person whose religion is Judaism."
For non-Jews, those seem straightforward enough.
Among Jews, those definitions fall way short of answering the question.
Just last week, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, the oldest association of Jewish clergy in North America, declared that most of the people generally considered Jews in the United States are really adherents of "another religion" that is "not Judaism."
The ultra-orthodox rabbis were talking about the more than 90 percent of American Jews who do not call themselves Orthodox.
Most of them - if they belong to any religious congregation - belong either to the Conservative or Reform branches of Judaism.
Emphasizing differences
In the minds of those Orthodox rabbis, "We are apostate Jews," said Rabbi Jerome Fox, of Roanoke's Beth Israel Synagogue, a Conservative congregation.
By not insisting on keeping kosher or prohibiting intermarriage with non-Jews, for instance, both Conservative and Reform Jews offend the religious sensibilities of these "extreme" Orthodox rabbis.
Reform Judaism, in particular, has adopted positions that the Orthodox find especially offensive. Reform rabbis concluded recently, for instance, that homosexuality should not be a bar to ordination.
Except for the negative publicity attached to it, members of Fox's Conservative congregation would "almost laugh off" the proclamation by the Orthodox rabbis that they are not "good" Jews, he said. The statement certainly will have little impact here.
Indeed, the proclamation seems to have more to do with a political fight in Israel - over whether to codify strictly Orthodox criteria for determining who is a Jew eligible for citizenship there - than with religious practice in the U.S.
A lock on the `truth'
The proclamation - and the surrounding controversy - highlight what seems to be a well-nigh universal characteristic of religious practice.
That is, the struggle to define "true" religion and enforce acceptable religious practice.
Reform and Conservative Judaism have long lived in a cooperative spirit, both here in the Roanoke Valley and across the United States.
"We've realized we have more in common than in difference," Fox said.
In this month's newsletter from Roanoke's Reform Temple Emanuel, Rabbi Kathy Cohen pointed out the irony of the Orthodox rabbis' divisive statement at a time when Roanoke Valley Jews - Conservative and Reform - "joined together as one to celebrate Purim." That annual festival is associated with the biblical book of Esther and the salvation of the Jews from an evil ruler's plot to destroy them.
So, she wrote, instead of dividing Jews here, the Orthodox rabbis provided an opportunity to demonstrate "our ability to treat each other with the understanding that we are one people created in the image of God!"
That's a skill it seems many religions have yet to learn.
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