By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin
BOCA RATON, Florida — Most people are convinced that there are comparatively few Jews in the world, only about 13.3 million in 2001, about 1.4 percent of the world population. Of these 4.9 million lived in Israel and 8.3 million outside the Holy Land. Logic would dictate that the actual figure of people of Jewish descent is many times that number and percentage. It is even possible that those with Jewish ancestry outnumber people of all other Western religions.
Let’s look first at the most radical view of the number of Jews.
The twelfth century Spanish poet Yehuda Halevi was well-respected during his lifetime, but is better known today for his poetical defense of Judaism called The Kuzari, a book that is admired by so many Jews that numerous rabbis give classes and lectures on it, as if it is a holy book. Unfortunately, neither these rabbis nor their congregants delve deeply enough into the volume to understand it, as Hillel Harkin does in his book Yehudah Halevi.
After analyzing Halevi’s views, Harkin compares Halevi’s Kuzari to Maimonides’ rational Guide of the Perplexed. “The reader attracted to Maimonides will find The Kuzari irrational in its assumptions, careless in its logic, dismissive of scientific thinking, presumptuously ethnocentric.”
I agree with Hillel Harkin. I especially disagree with two of Halevi’s key points. He teaches that Jews are biologically superior to all other people. Non-Jews are somewhere in-between animals and Jews. Even converts to Judaism are unable to reach the level of Jews because they lack their biology. They remain in the lower class. I dislike this notion. I think that God created all people and loves all people, and we should respect all people.
Furthermore, over the many centuries there were countless non-Jews who converted to Judaism and married Jews. These included many important biblical figures such as Moses’s wife Tzipporah and King David’s ancestress Ruth. Those who believe the future messiah will descend from David will have to agree that the messiah descended from a convert. Using Halevi’s logic, the number of Jews today is approximately zero.
I also do not think that his proof that Judaism was divinely ordained is logical. He argues that we know for a fact that the Sinai revelation occurred because it was seen by millions who passed on what they saw to the next generation. Thus, according to Halevi, we have reliable witness reports. I am not questioning revelation, just his logic. We know that incorrect ideas are passed on from generation to generation. We also know that other religions make the same unreliable claim.
We know that Jews were persecuted for generations and abandoned Judaism in many ways. Thousands were forced to convert. Thousands of others converted to secure an education or a job or to avoid harassment. Thousands did not convert but hid the fact that they were Jews and acted as non-Jews. The original Jews who did this retained their Jewishness, but their children and grandchildren did not. They simply continued to be non-Jews as their parents acted. Thousands of Jewish women were raped during pogroms and attacks such as by the Crusaders (beginning with the first crusade in 1095) who made their way across Europe to secure the Holy Land from the Arabs. The intermarriage rate between Jews and non-Jews has always been high. Ezra and Nehemiah railed against it separately and on more than a single occasion unsuccessfully in biblical days. Today, it is as high as 58 percent. The daughters of two recent presidents, Clinton and Trump, married Jewish husbands but only Ivanka Trump converted. Most of the above-mentioned people had children who lived as non-Jews. While Chelsea Clinton did not convert and her children are not considered Jewish by Jewish law which calls people Jewish if they are descendant of a Jewish mother, her children, like it or not, have “Jewish blood.”
Even Adolf Hitler may have had a Jewish ancestor. There are those who believe that his grandmother was a household cook to a Jewish family and had a son with a 19-year-old son of the family who became Hitler’s grandfather. Even the grandchildren of Haman converted according to the Talmud (Gitin 57b and other sources) and learned and taught Torah in Bnei Brak in Israel. Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and not permitted to live in Spain until 1950. Yet some of Columbus’ crew, including the first European to set foot on the new land, and perhaps even Columbus himself, were Jews who were forcibly converted to Christianity according the famed historian Cecil Roth. It is possible that along with President Lyndon B. Johnson, President Abraham Lincoln also descended from Jews, as shown in “Joys of Jewish Folklore.”
Even if these claims of Jewish ancestry are untrue, they reflect the view stated in this essay that there are more Jews than people think.
If we use the metaphor “Jewish blood,” we can say that the descendants of these people had Jewish blood. We can also say that the acts perpetrated against Jews described in the above paragraph were so numerous and were followed by multitude births that it is even possible that there are very few if any person, living today that lacks Jewish blood.
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Rabbi Dr. Drazin is a retired brigadier general and the author of more than 50 books.
From Jerry Klinger, Boynton Beach, Florida:
Thanks for sharing and writing the piece.
Logical question then…Ethiopian Jews look Ethiopian. Indian Jews look Indian. Askenazic Jews look European. Sephardic Jews look like indigenous Arabs. Israel practices a do not ask do not tell form of Jewish idenity with Russian Jews. My long experience in American Jewish Western history showed much intermarriage. It was not uncommon for children of “non-Jewish” mothers to be raised as Jews. Today, the who is a Jew part is lost. The children of these unions believe themselves to be Jews.
The debate over Rape and parentage is, I suspect, more self-justifying and overstated, for matrilineal descent purposes.
Why do we still insist on matrilineal descent as the true proof of Jewish identity? When the Messiah finally comes, will the Kosher Jews glow and the non-Kosher one not?
Personally, I have come to reject only matrilineal descent. I like Ben Gurion’s definiton. If anyone is crazy enough to call themselves a Jew, they must be Jewish.
This is not a time in America to talk about Jewish blood and how there might be many more Jews than we thought. This is not scientific. And it reeks of arrogance and hubris. We should stick to facts and not feed the beast of Fake News and BS “factoids.” 1.8-2.2% of the US population is Jewish. Virtual Judaism says it is 2.1% of the US as of 2018, and Pew says .2% of the world. So please, STOP because FACTS AND TRUTH MATTER. Thank you.