Last November, dozens of students came together at Brown University for a conference sponsored by Brown’s “Jew over Two: The Half-Jew Crew.” The conference, formally entitled “Mixed Identities: People of Combined Jewish and Non-Jewish Heritages Conference,” brought together students and members of the larger Jewish community to discuss what the organizers termed “The Half-Jewish Question.”
Brown’s half-Jew club–which, as far as anyone I spoke to knows, is the only such student organization in the country–was started last year by a group of friends who realized that they were all half-Jewish. The half-Jew club’s purpose, explains its president, Brown junior Ilana Friedman, is to provide “an open forum for people who are half-Jewish.”
This may not seem like a particularly groundbreaking idea, but Brown’s half-Jew club is at the forefront of what seems to be a growing movement. There is now a Web site (www.halfjew.com) devoted to discussion of what it means to be half-Jewish. And in 2000, Daniel Klein and Freke Vuijst published the widely discussed The Half-Jewish Book: A Celebration. The movement is based on the idea that a person can be Jewish and something else–another religion or ethnicity–simultaneously.
This is an idea that has the possibility of appealing to a wide number of people. Some studies have shown as many as half of American Jews marrying non-Jews. “Up until very recently Jews did not really intermarry, except in tiny numbers, so I think we are at an unprecedented time in Jewish history,” says Lynn Davidman, the interim chair of Brown’s American Civilization department, who is writing a book about half-Jews. “People who are born of one Jewish parent are one example of an increasing phenomenon in U.S. society, which is that people are born with more than one kind of identity.”
But despite the great deal of attention that is now paid to the issue of intermarriage, the term “half-Jew” is not particularly welcomed by the larger Jewish community. “Much of the Jewish community,” says half-Jew club co-founder and Brown junior Philip Lederer, “doesn’t allow people to classify themselves as half-Jewish.”
The exact definition of the term “half-Jew” is not entirely clear. According to halfjew.com, “A half-Jew is someone who has one Jewish parent, and one non-Jewish parent.” This definition, however, is problematic to many people with one Jewish parent who consider themselves fully Jewish. Lederer takes this problem into consideration and is more careful in his definition, adding that to be a half-Jew one must “consider him or herself a half-Jew.”
However one defines half-Jewishness, the notion entails a radical reimagining of what it means to be Jewish. It shifts Jewish identity away from its traditional religious definition, in which one is either Jewish or not Jewish, with no in-between status, towards a more ethnic definition, in which Jewish identity is divisible.
Traditionally, an individual’s Jewishness has been determined according to Jewish law, or halakhah. Under halakhah one is Jewish if one has a Jewish mother or converts to Judaism. Conservative and Orthodox Judaism stand by the halakhic definition of Jewishness, and its principle of matrilineal descent.
Reform Judaism, on the other hand, has broken with tradition in recognizing as Jewish those with Jewish fathers as well as those with Jewish mothers. But the Reform movement does not recognize half-Jews. And at least in the religious sphere, Reform Judaism clearly disapproves of the synthesis of different identities hinted at by the notion of half-Jewishness. In 1995, for instance, the Reform movement urged that children being raised with more than one religious tradition not be allowed to study at Reform religious and day schools.
Rabbi Yehoshua Laufer, director of the Providence Chabad House, had never heard of Brown’s half-Jewish club, but he is quick to dispute the idea behind it. “Whoever is using the term ‘half-Jew’ is missing an understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The definition of a Jew,” he says, pausing to stroke his beard, “is someone who has a Jewish soul–acquired by having a Jewish mother or a halakhic conversion. Every Jew has it, notwithstanding the level of observance, and every Jew has a 100 percent Jewish soul.”
Asked to speculate as to why people would identify themselves as half-Jewish, Laufer responds, “The term ‘half-Jew’ is being used for lack of any other term. It’s young people searching for their identity. Those who have a Jewish mother should know that they are not half-Jewish, but fully. The word ‘half’ is what people use to identify themselves, but there is no such thing as a half-Jew.”
Rabbi Wayne Franklin, one of two rabbis at Temple Emmanuel, a large Conservative synagogue in Providence, attended the half-Jew conference. He says he is sympathetic to students of mixed parentage, but not particularly supportive of the term ‘half-Jew’ and its implications. “I wasn’t familiar with the term before [attending the conference],” he says. “And I found it intriguing to realize that people were seriously struggling with issues of identity. That’s the whole problem of intermarriage. But it’s not the fault of the child, it’s something that’s put on them…People crave wholeness and [at the conference] there was an implicit recognition that that wasn’t there.”
Asked if half-Jews exist, Franklin is silent for a few seconds. “Are there people who consider themselves as such? Yes. Is there such a status in Judaism? No. I understand the difficulty of choice. I don’t understand dual identity. I don’t really understand what it means to be half of something. There is a passage in the Torah, You should love the Lord with all your heart and all your soul and all your might. I don’t know how you can do this as a half-Jew.”
Others, however, are more receptive. Rabbi Alan Flam, as the former director of Brown’s Hillel, is quite familiar with the half-Jew club and questions of identity on campus. “I think this is a radically new question for the Jewish community,” says Flam. “Students are talking less about theology and more about culture. They are saying, ‘Wait, I have a dual identity’…similar to students who may have one parent who is Asian and one who is black. They are saying, ‘I want to figure out a way to affirm both identities in my life.'”
Flam, who was ordained as a Reform rabbi but is not currently affiliated with the Reform movement, is supportive of the club’s efforts. He says he feels no need to “define boundaries of who is Jewish and who is not.” But he also takes issue with the ethnic basis for Jewish identity that the half-Jewish movement seems to rely upon. “I think the Jewish community needs to move beyond the ethnic definition [of Jewishness]. I understand why we have it, but…I think we should move to a new time of people making affirmative choices, saying, ‘This is what I want to be a part of.'”
As more and more Jews marry non-Jews, defining who is Jewish becomes increasingly complicated. Indeed, there is considerable disagreement over what constitutes the basis of Jewish identity–religion, ethnicity, or something else, maybe culture or community. A quick look into my family shows just how complicated the debates over defining Jewishness can be.
My mother was born and raised Jewish and my father, although raised Christian, converted when he married her–making me halakhically Jewish and ethnically half-Jewish. I define myself as fully Jewish because I was raised in a Jewish household…actually two Jewish households.
When I was three my parents got divorced. Now they are both remarried and each have two additional children, my half-brothers and half-sisters, all of whom can in some ways be considered Jewish.
My stepfather’s mother is Jewish and his father Christian, and he was raised Christian. But when he marr
ied my mother, he started going to synagogue, and now he is, for all intents and purposes, a practicing Jew.
Adam and Anna, my 18-year-old half-brother and 12-year-old half-sister on my mother’s side, are Jewish according to halakhah and three-quarters Jewish according to the ethnic rubric. They both attend Hebrew School weekly and go to synagogue on the High Holidays.
What’s more interesting is my father’s side. He, remember, converted to Judaism when he married my mother and, like John Goodman’s character in the movie The Big Lebowski, retained some connection to Judaism after their divorce. His new wife, my stepmother, is not Jewish–making my half-brother and half-sister on my father’s side, 8-year-old Coleman and 5-year-old Allison, not Jewish according to halakhah and not Jewish in terms of ethnicity.
Here’s the catch: they both attend Tehiya Jewish Day School. Coleman and Allison–my supposedly non-Jewish half-siblings–know more about Judaism than Adam and Anna, my Jewish half-siblings. Coleman and Allison celebrate Shabbat every week, eat bagels, and have only Jewish friends. And yet, few would consider them Jewish. So what are they?
They are caught between Jewish community and Jewish ethnicity, between Jewish culture and Jewish law. They have everything that makes a person feel Jewish–culture, community, education–but none of the things that have traditionally been understood to make a person Jewish. All the rabbis I spoke with agreed that Coleman and Allison are not Jewish. But they agreed it is a difficult situation.
As Jewish identity in the United States becomes more complicated, the debate over labels and definitions has become less important than the personal decisions people make about how to identify themselves, practice Judaism, and live Jewishly. Ultimately, Coleman and Allison will have to choose for themselves whether they are Jewish or not. They may not be typical Jews, but Coleman and Allison have the same choices we all have: how to identify, how to practice, how to be Jewish. It all comes down to, as Rabbi Flam put it, affirmative choices–whether one chooses to be half-Jewish, whole-Jewish, or not Jewish at all.
