Should Judaism be determined by paternal descent as well as maternal?

Question

As reform and reconstructionist Judaism grow in popularity so is the number of people who just have one jewish parent that consider themselves Jewish. Since I think we need all the jews we can get, I think we should change the rules.

Also, many peopel believe the matenal descent thing was just because it is alot easier to determine who somone's mother is than there father. But today, with DNA testing this is not a problem.

NamesAreMuch....
I think you made a valid point for my other question, but this time I am speaking strictly about the maternal paternal question. For the sake of argument I assume that a person who considers himself jewish by paternal heritage would be as observant as anyone else.

Answer 1

Should judaism allow christianity and islam and atheism to be part of it, since many people believe that the bible is just about morality and that those other groups are moral too?

Personally, I don't second guess G-d's decisions.

Update: Randy, the point is that G-d's law is G-d's law. People may have "reasons" why they think G-d did what He did. But G-d didn't say "use the mother until dna checking is common". G-d said it goes by the mother. End of story. Same thing with kashrus. Some people think that seafood was disallowed because it was a health hazard, and that since nowadays we know to cook it beforehand (a ridiculous thoery in my opinion) it is ok. This is absolute rubbish. G-d didn't write any clauses. He said "no shrimp. No shrimp means no shrimp. Nowhere in the talmud do we find this approach of changing jewish law based on what we surmise reasons for certain statues are and claiming that they're no longer relevant. Even laws established by rabbis -- and not G-d Himself -- are given that sort of treatment. It is simply not a jewish approach at all.

Answer 2

Who is a Jew, and anything else that has to do with Judaism, should be dtermined by one thing, and one thing only. That is Halacha, aka Jewish law.

Since Halacha is clear on the "who is a Jew" issue in regards to matrilineal descent, "changing it" is a non starter.

As is the case, both Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism are non Halachic by definition.
And in the case of Reform, they have already decided that they accept patrilineal descent regardless of Halacha.

And interesting side point: Reform Judaism requires at least that the child be brought up Jewish. In other words, if someone has a Jewish father but no Jewish mother and was rasied without religion, officialy speaking, Reform would not consider them Jewish (unofficially may be a different story).
However, they would apply that criteria to someone born of a Jewish mother as well. Orthodox Judaism would consider someone not raised Jewish but born of a Jewish mother Jewish. Thus, we have a scenario where Reform is (officially anyways) more stringent than Orthodoxy.

Answer 3

1)Who says we need all the Jews we can get? All we want are those who are commited.
2) We never change Halacha just for these petty reasons. The only way to change these rules is to get a court greater in number and wisdom than that which made the rules. G-d made these rules. Who's smarter than Him?

Answer 4

Do we really "need all the jews we can get"? How about getting decent human beings, rather than religious whackos?

Answer 5

The Jews are all going straight to the fiery pits of hell for killing Jesus! If you dont go to hell for killing the son of God then what do ya go to hell for?

Answer 6

Put it in the suggestion box ;)