Who is a Jew?- Again

So once again, in the middle of a war, a coalition crisis, and what the Israelis call 'Cucumber Season' (aka August), Israeli government officials have decided to bring up 'Who is a Jew' again.
The Interior Minister wants to hand out Jewish status to the children of foreign workers. The Attorney General wants to recognize any conversions done in Israel as valid, or none at all. Basically, he wants to find the fabled status quo, by which issues of personal status are determined in accordance with the traditional interpretation of Halakha, unconstitutional. (Of course, Israel doesn't have a ratified constitution, but why trifle with details?) If they succeed, they'll undermine the Joint Conversion institutes that have finally gotten going and might solve a difficult problem. But then, hey, most of the Dayyanim involved in conversion would not allow most Orthodox Jews to convert because they're not religious enough. The implications of all of this is literally a schism
within the Jews of Israel, where the repurcussions are more severe than the hurban visiting the Jews back home in the USA.

The situation, like so many others, reminds me of something Rabbi Soloveitchik zt"l once said. If you notice, periodically in the Humash, an anonymous figure appears, known simply as the 'ish,' the man. It was an ish that wrestled with Jacob. It was an ish that sent Joseph to meet his brothers. Both encounters were momentous, unexpected and changed the course of Jewish history from its expected pattern. The Rov said that we learn from this that when events become absurd, when they go against the normal patterns of causality, it's a sign that Divine Providence, Hashgacha, is working in history.

Halevai!

Who is Geviha?

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 91a) refers to an unassuming guy named Geviha ben Pesisa. The story goes that when Alexander the Great conquered the Land of Israel, a delegation of Egyptians came to him and demanded that the Jews return the wealth they took with them when they left in the wake of the Exodus (some nine hundred years before). The leadership in Jerusalem was at a loss as to what to do, until Geviha b. Pesisa offered to accept the challenge and answer them. Geviha was not a famous scholar, nor was he a powerful politician. He was simply an astute 'everyman.' He told the powerful in Jerusalem: 'Look. This is a win-win proposition. If I lose, you can say that all you managed to do was to beat a nobody. If I win, they"ll look like total idiots.' The leadership agreed and Geviha appeared before Alexander to answer the Egyptians.' He looked them straight in the eye and said: 'You want compensation? First pay us for the 430 (0r 206) years of bondage to which you subjected the children of Israel. Then we can discuss the rest.' The Egyptians were stunned. They asked Alexander for a continuance and that night fled.

I"ve always liked Geviha. He was able to talk straight in the face of challenges, when everybody else was paralyzed with fear, politics and ambition. This blog will deal with Israel, Judaism, and what not, as I see it. It's dedicated to Geviha's memory and uses his name because somethimes anonymity is still the way to go.

By the way, do you think that the story with the Egyptians is far fetched? Well, there's a lawyer in Cairo who plans to sue the State of Israel for the same money the Egyptians asked for in the fourth century BCE. He doesn't realize that by placing his suit, he's admitting that the Jews in Israel are the direct descendants of Biblical Israel, something Arab propaganda has been denying for years.