To be, or not to be... a Jew

Being a Jew can refer to a religious conviction, cultural identity, or ethnicity - or all three of them - but needless to say, it is a complex and controversial question. Conversion is possible, but the process is rigid and demanding, also if you would convert through a more progressive movement. In Israel, however, only the orthodox conversion is acknowledged, and this puts many people in a twilight zone, if they are not "religious enough" to make an orthodox conversion. Either they are part-Jewish (i.e. non-Jewish, if the mother is not a Jew) or they have through their life nurtured a strong connection and feeling of belonging to the Jewish community, religion and culture, without being Jewish by birth. But unless they accept the whole package of an orthodox conversion, with all that is included, these people will never get the possibility to be considered Jewish.

Marriages in Israel are also performed under the auspices of the religious authority to where the couple belongs, and there is no provision for inter-faith marriages or civil marriages. This means that the day we want to get married, that cannot happen in Israel. I am by far not in a position where I would even consider an orthodox conversion. On the other hand I guess that my Swedish family is pretty happy over the fact that we will marry in Sweden.

While the path to becoming a Jew is made harder than entering Fort Nox, parts of the Jewish community also see inter-faith marriages and assimilation as a great threat to the future of the Jewish people and arranges campaigns against it. Understandably this campaign imploded in a storm of criticism and was finally pulled. Then I am quietly pondering whether it is the right strategy to make it as hard as possible for people who wish to commit to the identity of being a Jew, when there is an outspoken risk that the Jewish communities in the world is shrinking. Or is their goal to accumulate even more autosomal recessive disorders like the Tay-Sachs disease..? If you ask me, I don't think that someone who has been here for 5770 years can be extinct easily, but please embrace those who so desire! Shana tova everybody!