Racism in Jewish Law

I want to introduce this article with a few points. For the purposes of this article, I'm only discussing Orthodox Judaism. A story that has been in the news recently is the arrest of my old rabbi, Rabbi Barry Freundel, for placing a camera in the mikvah, or ritual bath, to get pictures of women while they were naked, usually women who were attempting to convert to Judaism or who had recently converted. This has brought attention to the sexual abuse of female converts to Judaism, and I want to add my own experiences to this discussion. I don't want you to walk away from this article with the belief that all Jews are racists. That is not true, and is not the point. Jewish apologists often respond to the points in this article with the phrase "Judaism is not a race; people can convert!"

While it is true that people are able to convert to Judaism, if you ask any convert about the process, they will tell you that it is long, it is hard, and at the end, they are still not equals. Converts to Judaism are frequently the victims of the racism of other Jews; ask any black or (God forbid) Arab convert--and even those born Jewish with black or Arab ancestors. Converts are not equal under Jewish law. They cannot be in positions of authority over other Jews, they cannot marry certain people, even the people they are legally permitted to marry will often refuse them on the grounds that they have an inferior yichus (lineage).

Prospective converts cannot form relationships with Jews while they are in the process of converting--again, conversion is a long process, and frequently takes upwards of two years, and sometimes as many as ten; and during this entire time they must be single, or married to a non-Jew. They cannot get married to a Jew, they cannot have children, even with a non-Jew, because this child's conversion will not necessarily be automatic when theirs is complete, and even if it is, the child will have the same disadvantages as any other convert. Then there is the fear of your conversion being retroactively declared void and your post-conversion children bastards, sometimes not even because of your actions, but because of the actions of your converting rabbi.

But these complaints do not strike at the heart of the problem. The heart of the problem is in the Talmud itself. An uninitiated person may think that the Talmud is of little significance, being as it is simply a set of explanations of the laws of the Torah, and the Torah is believed to be the revealed word of God Himself. This is not true. In fact, the Talmud is more important in dictating day-to-day activities than the Torah, and is believed to contain a record of the Oral Torah--the part of the Torah that was not committed to writing by Moses.

The importance of the Talmud is best described by the story of the Oven of Aknai, which describes an incident where one Rabbi, R. Eliezer, ruled that an oven was ceremonially clean, while the rest ruled it was unclean. R. Eliezer brought many arguments to prove his point, and finally in frustration called out to God to speak on his behalf. A voice from heaven said: "'Why do ye dispute with R. Eliezer, seeing that in all matters the halachah (religious law) agrees with him!' But R. Joshua arose and exclaimed: 'It [the Torah] is not in heaven.'  What did he mean by this? — Said R. Jeremiah: That the Torah had already been given at Mount Sinai; we pay no attention to a Heavenly Voice, because Thou hast long since written in the Torah at Mount Sinai, After the majority must one incline." R. Eliezer was excommunicated for his insolence, and all the items he had declared clean were ordered destroyed. The voice of God Himself was ruled not as important to Jewish law as the consensus of the rabbis of the Bet Din ha Gadol (Sanhedrin), which later was written down to become the Talmud.

Incidentally, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page linked to above, you find the following gem in the Talmud: "It has been taught: R. Eliezer the Great said: Why did the Torah warn against [later edit: the wronging of] a proselyte in thirty-six, or as others say, in forty-six, places? Because he has a strong inclination to evil." If you read the two sentences without the later edit of "the wronging of" into them, they make a much more coherent statement which happens to be quite racist against the person who has already completed against his conversion. Why would the convert's being evil have an effect on whether or not he should be harmed by others? (Even if it does, the passage is saying that the convert is evil.) Whereas if you read the passage as warning against a convert, because he is evil, it makes much more sense.

So what does the rest of the Talmud say about the non-Jew? This passage is from Yebamoth 98a:
"Raba stated: With reference to the Rabbinical statement that [legally] an Egyptian has no father, it must not be imagined that this is due to [the Egyptians'] excessive indulgence in carnal gratification, owing to which it is not known [who the father was], but that if this were known it is to be taken into consideration;  but [the fact is] that even if this is known it is not taken into consideration. For, surely, in respect of twin brothers, who originated in one drop that divided itself into two, it was nevertheless stated in the final clause, that they 'neither participate in halizah nor perform levirate marriage'. Thus it may be inferred that the All Merciful declared their children to be legally fatherless, for [so indeed it is also] written, Whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue [semen] is like the issue of horses."

So the children of non-Jewish women (the passage specifically mentions Egyptians, but this is a stand-in for any non-Jew; because the Sanhedrin spent so much time under the rule of foreign governments, they tended to use a nation that wasn't currently in power as a stand-in for all non-Jews, in case the document was seized by those in power, who wouldn't like what it said about them, as we will see later) are considered to not have any legal fathers. And the only reason even alluded to is that this is because of the rampant promiscuity of non-Jewish women.

This is why if a Jewish man has a child with a non-Jewish women, the child is not Jewish:  the child is legally fatherless. The Jewish man has no legal responsibility according to the halachah to care for the child. And the reason for this, if you ask most Jews, is the reason that is alluded to in this passage: because non-Jewish women are promiscuous. Even women who are attempting to convert to Judaism will often be quizzed, both by the converting Rabbis and by other Jews, about their sexual history. After they convert, when they want to get married, they will often be quizzed by prospective husbands about their sexual history; whereas women born Jewish do not face this humiliating ordeal. I'm not saying that this will happen to every woman trying to convert to Judaism, and I'm not saying all men born into Orthodox Judaism will do this. But this kind of thing happens far more frequently than anyone will admit.

This belief that non-Jewish women are all promiscuous is so pervasive that women converting to Judaism may often, in my experience, be coerced into sexual relationships that they are not a willing participant in by Jewish men, who threaten to tell their converting rabbi that the woman "seduced" them if the woman does not comply with the man's demands. In my own experience, not only was I coerced to do things I was not comfortable with by this threat, I was also told that it was of my own initiative, as I was promiscuous. I was told things like, "I knew I liked you for a reason, you are kinky." As an anti-sexual asexual this could not have been further from the truth. I have a deep seated fear of physical intimacy based on my early childhood experiences and on my own disgust at the concept of sexual attraction, and I absolutely did not initiate anything in any relationship I was ever in. Unfortunately, because of my lack of healthy relationships to base what a new relationship should look like off of, I was easy to manipulate and take advantage of.

I hope that in the wake of the Rabbi Freundel arrest, this issue can be discussed openly and honestly, and the root problems can be dealt with by the Orthodox Jewish community as a whole. One of the things Judaism does well is coming together to solve problems internally; although this often results in the problems being swept under the rug, I sincerely hope that this time, this issue can bring attention to these issues and they can be addressed and resolved. It will take time, and it will be a painful process for many, but I hope that the future can be made better through what has happened.