Reading this fascinating post about “mixed-race” Jewish kids has got me thinking about the Jewish model on defining race, and how it differs from the other models defining race in this country. Traditionally, in Judaism, you are considered Jewish if your mother is Jewish. So, the girl mentioned in the article, whose father is Chinese, and whose mother’s father is Chinese, is considered fully Jewish (at least in theory), not half-Jewish, or a quarter Jewish or “multi-racial” in the sense that it’s often used.
There are a lot of things I like about this construction. Emotionally, it resonates with me, in the sense that I don’t consider myself “half” of anything. I think that’s a bizarre idea when you think about it closely. My training as a computer programmer likes that it draws a clear line, and that iterates nicely from generation to generation. In fact, it’s the only set-up I can think that has that feature. Most racial constructs begin to get extremely foggy when you start talking about third generation descendants (whether it be “octoroons” or “sansei”).
Obviously it also has its downsides. On the one hand, a more common paradigm filters through in cases like the one that this article talks about, where non-White Jews are often not considered “really” Jewish, despite having an indisputable claim according to tradition. But, even if you take the tradition at face value, it can do some weird things. Jewish friends of mine who are men have gotten a lot more pressure from their parents about marrying Jewish women (over other races), because the parents want their grandchildren raised inside the faith. Of course, a non-Jewish woman can convert (which I’ve also seen among my circle of friends), but it’s an extra consideration which doesn’t apply to a Jewish woman marrying a non-Jewish man. And, I have several friends whose non-Jewish mother decided not to convert leaving children with a Jewish father who are, traditionally, not at all Jewish themselves, which is kind of odd.
All in all, it’s a system. And while systems for dealing with race are necessary, they’re all problematic in one way or another.