Fine, But What Can We Do About It?

Naturally, there is not necessarily one, simple clear answer to this problem.  Matrilineal descent is so ingrained in the mind of many Jews that the work of extracting it will of necessity be a multi-front battle.  We are confronting a tradition that many Jews, unfortunately, regard in much the way that Americans regard "mom, home, and apple pie."  A great deal of work will need to be done to make the Jewish community at large understand that we regard matrilineal descent as our heritage about as much as African-Americans in South Caroline regard the Confederate flag as part of their heritage.

That said, we at Emunah Avot have developed a "master plan" for individuals we call the Four Refusals:

1. Refuse to be polite.

Many of us have encountered versions of this scenario once or twice: you are sitting at a Shabbat meal, and someone starts to bemoan the "destruction" intermarriage is wreaking on the Jewish community, and starts talking about patrilineal descent's "divisiveness" within the community, or otherwise implies that patrilineal Jews are not "real Jews," not realizing that a patrilineal Jew is present.  Or, someone starts talking about how he or she chooses a Conservative affiliation because the movement is "egalitarian" but says she or he is opposed to patrilineal descent.

We feel that the first step in changing hearts and minds is to refuse to be polite under these circumstances.  The first step to turning over the apple cart completely is to tilt it.  We favor an approach to supporters of the status quo similar to what many governments have done with regard to smoking.  If we shrink the number of places where people can express bigoted opinions about us "safely," without fear of being taken to task verbally, we will make it harder for matrilineality to claim to be the communal "norm".

2. Refuse to be invisible.

The greatest strides in human justice over the last hundred years have occurred specifically because people were forced to put a "human face" on  injustice.  The Civil Rights movement succeeded in America in large part because American television viewers were forced to confront images of nonviolent African-American protestors confronting hoses and attack dogs in Birmingham.

While we at Emunah Avot do not claim to be being attacked by hoses and dogs, we do feel that our exclusion is maintained largely because people are not forced to confront the reality of what matrilineality does in the Jewish community.  Attitudes toward intermarriage that force adult children of intermarriage to hide or feel ashamed of their status deny other Jews the opportunity of seeing real people behind the issue.  We need to start being up-front and unapologetic about who we are.

3. Refuse to be silent.

Emunah Avot advocates making this issue one the Jewish community cannot stop hearing about.  We feel that people who support egalitarian policies on Jewish descent need to speak up--in synagogue board meetings, in Federations, in Israel, in every place where people who have power to change things can be forced to hear.  Refusing to be silent can take a number of forms.  It can include formal protest, such as picketing of the Rabbinical Assembly and other Jewish organizations that maintain matrilineal descent.  It can also include such simple acts as telling our stories, of encouraging those who have been affected by this tradition in more subtle, but just as real, ways, to speak up as well.  As we noted in our section, "Why Not Just Convert," many of the problems caused by matrilineal descent in the Jewish community are quietly swept under the rug.  We need to bring those issues back into the light of day.

4. Refuse to be alone or to see your problems as personal rather than institutional.

In a myriad of ways, the Jewish community works, consciously and unconsciously, to divide patrilineal Jews, and the fathers who raise them, from one another.  Although groups for intermarried families now abound in non-Orthodox synagogues, these groups are not really centers of advocacy and, one suspects, serve to deflect demands for substantive change by encouraging the intermarried to see their problems as personal rather than institutional problems.

Often, patrilineal Jews who have undergone a conversion are encouraged to put "their issues" behind them--not to talk about them once the mikveh waters have dried from their skin.  We feel that this is entirely the wrong approach.  It is not we who need to protected from our discomfort; it is the wider community that needs to get over its discomfort with us.  The Jewish community needs to be made to understand that the emotional and communal problems caused by matrilineal descent do not have to be a part of Jewish life.  Our problems are not personal in nature, but the result of an institutional injustice.

In addition to encouraging individuals to adopt and practice the Four Refusals, we at Emunah Avot believe that organization is the best key to effecting real change on this issue.  Other marginalized groups within the Jewish community, such as Jewish feminists and LGBT Jews, could not have achieved what they have without powerful organizations promoting their agenda.  Simply put, Emunah Avot hopes to do for patrilineal Jews what Ezrat Nashim did for Jewish feminists in the 1970s, and what groups such as Keshet Rabbis have done for LGBT Jews more recently.

Some tactics Emunah Avot will seek to use to further our cause include:

1) Production of educational pamphlets on the issue, to dispel widespread misconceptions about the halakhic basis of matrilineal descent.

2) Outreach to Jewish media outlets, to increase the profile of the issue in the minds of the Jewish public.

3) Picketing of Jewish organizations that continue to enforce matrilineal descent, and, in particular, of organizations that seek to roll back advances patrilineal Jews have made both here and in Israel regarding their status within the Jewish community.

4) Outreach to synagogue leaders, to encourage them to treat acceptance of egalitarian descent as a litmus test in the hiring of new rabbis and other staff.