Q: If a Jewish man marries a non-Jewish woman and they have a child, would the Reform movement consider their child to be Jewish?

A: The Reform position on this question, referred to as Patrilineal Descent, is often misunderstood. What we say is that child born of one Jewish parent, whether it is the mother or the father, is under the PRESUMPTION of being Jewish, but that his/her Jewishness must be activated by "appropriate and timely" Jewish acts. It is not enough to simply be born to a Jewish parent. For a boy, one such act would certainly be brit milah. Without that, one might question this child's Jewishness. If, on the other hand, the family celebrated Jewish holidays, educated the boy, had him become a Bar Mitzvah, etc., in other words, if the child is being raised exclusively as a Jew and was not baptized and is not being given a formal or informal Christian education, then we would consider him Jewish - just as an orthodox Jew would consider a boy born of a Jewish mother to be Jewish even if he had not been circumcised.

Another way to put it is like this: we consider a person who acts and identifies as a Jew to be a Jew, a definition we find happier than a sort of blood-line/racial definition (especially after the Holocaust).

By the way, when the Reform movement debated this years ago, scholarly papers pointed out that in the Bible the line ALWAYS followed the father, including the cases of all those heroes, like Joseph and Moses, who married into non-Israelite priestly families.

Based on material prepared by Rabbi George Stern, Upper Nyack, NY

Q: I understand that my Jewish faith comes by way of my mother and not my father. The usual Torah answer I receive is found in Deuteronomy 7-3 . If this is true why do we trace our heritage through Abraham and not Sarah. I have a Jewish mother and a Christian father. What am I?

A: As you know from watching the news, the issue of who is a Jew is a hotly debated one nowadays. There is no simple answer.

Traditionally, the definition is a double one. Your status as a Jew depended on the status of your mother: if she was Jewish you were Jewish and so on. But your tribal affiliation (Priest, Levi, Benjaminite, Judean,...) was determined by the father. Why matters evolved this way is entirely unclear. These laws as such are spelled out fully only in the time of the Mishnah (around 230 CE). It is not necessarily the case that these laws were in operation in just this way back in Biblical times, let alone the time of Abraham. The question is moot in any case since both Abraham and Sarah were "Jewish."

The Reform movement some ten years ago decided that it would accept as Jewish anybody who has one Jewish parent (i.e. mother OR father) and who was raised Jewishly. This policy of "patrilineality" as it is called, is one of the points of disagreement between traditional and Reform Judaism since some people can now be considered Jewish by one movement but not the other. If the person in question is a woman, then the disputed status would presumably be carried forward into the next generation, etc.

As to your case, since your mother is Jewish, you would be considered Jewish according to halacha (Jewish law), and so by all Jews (unless you openly declared otherwise). If you consider yourself a Christian, say, and act accordingly; then you would be considered a Christian by Reform, but as a bad Jew by the Orthodox!

In the end, there is no universally agreed upon answer among Jews, and in some cases other groups have other answers entirely.

Written by Rabbi Peter J. Haas, Religious Studies, Vanderbilt University, 2001