The Jewish traditional law layouts three criteria for membership into the Jewish fold: birth, marriage to a male Jew, and conversion. However, these three doors into the Jewish community have not been operative simultaneously through history.

Intermarriage

The biblical period shows how marriage to a male Jew was the key for an outsider to enter into the full membership and rights of the Jewish community. Without it, the very offspring of Moses and Boaz would have been called into question.

Intermarriage that is not outlawed in the founding laws in Leviticus came under attack by Ezra and Nehemiah in the Fifth Century B.C.E. Both men had spent the best part of their active lives in the Babylonian courts and became the pioneers that caused and aided a remnant to return to the broken walls of Jerusalem. Living under very different circumstances, where their ancient land was no longer theirs, the tolerance and openness of intermarriage was no longer a luxury this struggling and mixed group of Babylonian Jewry could afford to maintain.

Intermarriage as they knew it, that of a female non-Jew joining and upholding the Israelite laws as the book of Ruth explains, thus ended in very sad circumstances. This abolishment was carried on and enforced in the rabbinic period. In 1983, the Reform movement in the United States reinstated the Jewish status of children in a marriage where any one partner was Jewish and the children were reared in Judaism.

The Ethnic Factor

One side of the argument is that by birth a person may inherit a religious way of life that as an adult they choose not to follow. The country of Israel is a good example of the mix of Jewish people from all walks of life and religious views. However, they are Jews because their forefathers were Jews, and as we read in Genesis 12:7, Abraham was the receiver of a special promise that would be forever passed on to his children. This community known by the name of Abraham’s grandson, Bnei Yisrael, is called by Ezra as the “holy seed” (9:2).

However, when reading the bible closely, we find that birth has not been a guarantee of acceptance into the Israelite community. Look at the varying treatments between the brothers Isaac and Ishmael (who shared the same father) and Jacob and Esau (same father and mother). We see that Ishmael and Esau were dropped from the history and society of the Israelites, and instead they took up position against their brothers.

The silence in the bible about why birth was not sufficient in these cases has caused much debate, and the rabbinic commentaries attempt to fill the silence with a possible faulty idolatrous character of the men. But even this reasoning shows that acting against God, can disinherit you.

The Faith Factor

This idea of removing yourself from the brotherhood, even though you were physically born into it, is a biblical idea and one that stems from the establishment of the covenant of laws as ministered by Moses. When this system was set in place, it established a connection with God that gave to each member the responsibility to respond to God by following His rules. Through disobedience to these laws, each person was putting in danger that membership.

Perhaps the clearest example of this faith factor that runs concurrently with the birth factor in the bible comes from Abraham. When he was living in Ur in Mesopotamia, the term Israelite and Jew had not yet come into conscious thought. He was a solitary man who heard and responded to the voice of God. His faith in and obedience towards God was tested even to the point where his precious son was laid-out to die by his hand. His faith was the door that allowed him into the new community built upon him. One can say he paved the way for those who, not by birth, but through faith can always have a glorious way to enter into the Jewish community.