Birthright by Choice, Meshuggeneh Christians, and Bar Mitzvahs for Palestinians

This past week, America's Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist Jewish establishment leaders united to speak out against a controversial new bill that they claim could prove to be devastating in it's effect of alienating the Jewish 'diaspora' from the Israeli state. Rabbis have made dramatic sermons about the bill, using strong words like "unjust", "tragic", and "catastrophe" to emphasize the true gravity of the situation. They've even pressed some US senators to make the bold move of addressing these concerns to the Israeli government. Is this finally marking the emergence of a popular movement by American Jews to remove themselves from complicity in Israel's crimes against the Palestinians? Has the brief web life of this blog already served to mobilize the masses to say 'ya basta' to Israeli chutzpah?

Before I start getting delusions of grandeur, or before anyone starts thinking the mainstream Jewish establishment has that kind of ethical backbone, I should specify that the divisive new bill has nothing to do with war crimes, land theft, or Palestinians, but rather Jewish conversion protocol. Already, the Orthodox Chief Rabbinate oversees all official conversions within Israel, but the new bill would further strengthen their control, potentially effecting the legitimacy of conversions done outside of Israel and hence the ability for converts to immigrate there via the Law of Return. Certainly, this gesture is hurtful and insulting to the diversity of Jewish religious practices, some of which offer a progressive alternative to Orthodox's traditional misogyny and homophobia. It also means on a practical level that Johnny from Cleveland, who converted because he really liked Defiance, read the wikipedia entry on Kabbalah, and wants to marry Sheila Schwartz, can't as easily move to Israel to claim Palestinian land as his 'birthright'.


Admittedly, the above caricature is not descriptive of the many sincere converters who feel a deep connection to the religion, and certainly I'm not suggesting Orthodox conversion is more authentic, but this imagined example does serve to point to the ridiculousness of the Law of Return in the first place. Inherent to the Law's flawed reasoning, Jews everywhere are connected to the land of Israel via an ancient ancestry that even atheist Jews can't deny; thus, Jewish immigrants are just 'returning' after a 2000 year vacation. During that time other groups may have come to water the plants and take in the mail, but the land is essentially ours by merit of our bloodline's inheritance. This essentialist notion of Jews as a race sits uneasily next to the fact that Jews can also be a religious identity that one can inhabit by choice. Can someone have a Jewish birthright if they're born something else? Maybe if I change my last name to 'Hostess' I can get a taste of that family's cupcake fortunes (though I guess for this analogy to work, the Hostess family would have stolen their cupcakes from Little Debbie, who now lives in a blockaded refugee camp).

Since, in the eyes of many, Israel is facing a 'demographic timebomb' via too many Arab babies, wouldn't government officials want to increase the Jew-to-gentile ratio by any means necessary, creating a Hebrew National sausage party even if it meant letting in some Reform converts? Alas, it seems as if many recent immigrants aren't quite Jewish enough, and they want to be sure to balance quantity with quality. Through the Law of Return's broad criteria for who can be eligible for claiming birthright, Israel has seen the truly surreal influx of actual neo-Nazis with vague Jewish ancestry. Certainly, Palestinian refugees must recognize the cruel irony that they're being prevented from returning to land they or their parents grew up in in deference to the rights of Nazis, the same racists who helped drive Ashkenazi Jews out of Europe and into Palestine in the first place.

Meanwhile, the Chief Rabbinate has come to embrace the mass immigration of recent converts from the northeastern Indian States of Manipur and Mizoram, known as the Bnei Menashe. They claim to be one of the lost tribes of Israel, exiled 2700 years ago before Judaism in it's current form even existed, and came to rediscover their inner Jew in the 1950's when one member of the group had a vision instructing him to lead his people to Judaism and the newly founded state of Israel. Skeptics, such as anthropologist Dr. Shalva Weil of Hebrew University, claim that the 'lost tribe' concept was introduced to them by Welsh Christian missionaries in the early 1900's, whose goal was to fulfill biblical prophecy about the return of the lost tribes signaling Jesus' second coming. Of course, according to this literal reading of the book of Revelations, once this happens those that accept Christ will be sent to heaven while Jews and everyone else will suffer lakes of fire, plagues, and monsters. Not metaphorical, but actual monsters. Perhaps those missionaries were kinda fair-weather friends.

Western Christians are still pivotal in the manipulation of the Bnei Menashe community, with the apocalypse lovin' American Evangeical community funneling millions of dollars through a group called the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews to facilitate Bnei Menashe immigration to, where else, illegal Israeli settlements. According to Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din, the Indians are being placed in settlements deeper into the West Bank deemed too dangerous by many other settlers (before the disengagement, several hundred of them had been set up in Gaza settlements as well). Another group pivotal to the Bnei Menashe's exploitation, the right wing Shavei Israel (headed by former Netanyahu advisor Michael Freund), insist that settlements are the only places where the Bnei Menashe are welcomed, though certainly the original Palestinian inhabitants have yet to greet them with house warming gifts.

So why is the Chief Rabbinate facilitating the fast-tracking of Bnei Menashe immigration while blocking American Reform and Conservative converts? For one, the Bnei Menashe are being unscrupulously propped up in contentious danger zones that American Jews are too scared and/or too PC to move into (and also Americans generally have greater financial resources than rural Indian villagers, who can't afford a nice loft in Tel Aviv). And since they don't pass the blood test to qualify for automatic ethnic-based citizenship, the Bnei Menashe are being put through Orthodox conversion protocol, turning them into the 'quality Jews' the Rabbinate craves.

While the Bnei Menashe cite customs and folklore that they say bear similarity to Jewish rituals and stories, their culture is completely unique unto itself. Therefore, the Jewish education they receive from outsiders is riddled with problems of racism and cultural erasure, exemplified by this quote from a Bnei Menashe woman in India talking about Orthodox requirements for female modesty in the form of long skirts: "It's not very comfortable, and almost all the girls in the city wear pants. But if it's essential, we'll make the effort." They're also exposed to a messianic form of Judaism that shares some of the Evangelical's beliefs about the approaching end times and an apocalyptic battle to be waged in Jerusalem; such are the beliefs of Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail who runs one of the re-education camps. I only hope that the Jewish version of the story doesn't end with us getting eaten by monsters.

Interestingly, the actual conversions are no longer able to take place in India, since missionary style conversion is forbidden by Indian law (supposedly it's forbidden by Jewish Law too, although that doesn't seem to apply to aggressively pursuing 'lost Jews'). Now, Bnei Menashe are transported by train to nearby Nepal for the conversions. I wonder if they cross paths with the Israelis who flock to Kathmandu after their army service to smoke hashish and try to forget about the trauma of war. I wonder if the former soldiers see the eager Indian converts leaving their villages to live in combat zones and think they're hallucinating.

As I mentioned before, the Bnei Menashe have to undergo conversion because DNA testing has shown no genetic link between them and other Jewish communities. However, a recent study has shown that most Jews share close genetic ties to indigenous Druze, Bedouins, and Palestinian Arabs. Another study has documented that Palestinians and Middle Eastern Jews are almost genetically identical.

Perhaps the solution to the Palestinian refugee and the Jewish demography problems is for the Palestinians to claim a Jewish identity based on common ancestry. If the genetic claim doesn't hold sway (as the Chief Rabbinate has in the past rejected Bnei Menashe due to "generations of co-mingling with other nations"), perhaps the Jewish state can just go about converting all of them, by strict Orthodox standards, of course. They claim the land is Jewish, so why not the indiginous people that came with it? Christian conquerers always balanced colonial violence with 'civilizing the savages' through preaching God's word, why shouldn't 'the chosen people' chose some others to come aboard? Co-existance is a lot easier when others share the same beliefs as you. Chuck Schumer practically suggested this solution himself in his notorious strangulation speech, saying "They don’t believe in the Torah, in David... You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay." Certainly they can be forced to have bar mitzvahs too.

Why stop there? If Palestinians stubbornly won't come to Judaism, certainly there's other groups that can be brought in to help hold onto the all-important Jewish majority. According to one of the studies cited above, Jews and Italians also share genetic linkage, so let's convert them, ship them to settlements, and maybe we could finally have kosher pizza that doesn't taste like cardboard. There must be other 'lost tribes' waiting to be re-discovered as well. According to Dr. Weil, "There might be billions of lost tribes out there by now. Because 28,000 were dispersed by Sennacherib and Shalmaneser, kings of Assyria. Through natural increase, this could be half the world today." Imagine, half the world living in Israel, and there would still no vacancies for Palestinian refugees.