The recent rabbinical ruling that the (born Christian and Danish) convert who divorced from her Israeli husband was never Jewish makes one wonder.
I can remember asking my wife how she knew I was Jewish, and getting no answer. But she said that her brother had a "bris" card which certified that her brother had had a kosher "bris". Me, I had nothing, nada, gar nichts!
So, am I Jewish?
So, I asked my 92 year old mother who can barely remember the pain I caused her many years ago (and since, but that's different). She answered that I was born in the Jüdische Krankenhaus in Hamburg, which had a special room for "bris"ing. Did I have a mohel I asked? She didn't know. She wasn't permitted to see the "bris". My grandfather Albert held me. He was an MD himself, so perhaps he actually did the dirty deed, but my mother claims (on no evidence) that he just held me down. So, who did it? I don't know, and never will.
When I ask her how I'm to prove I'm Jewish, she sheepishly says something equivalent to "drop you drawers" and then blushes. So old fashioned.
But when I was young, and the world was simpler, when the second World War had just ended, and "never again" had not yet been said, I was a lefty-liberal arguing about how the good German Christians could have looked away while their Jewish neighbors were annihilated. Now I know, but then I didn't, and even then, I obsessed about what would happen when they looked away here, in the good old US of A? In 1948, Israel offered an answer, i.e., a safe haven to flee to should the worst come true here. All you had to be was ..., Jewish!
Ah, said someone, there's the rub!
With the fashion of circumcision penetrating the larger (goyish, presumably American) world, "pulling down you pants" was no answer.
Now I'm no expert in this area, having seen very few penises other than my own, but I suspect that the difference between a therapeutic circumcision and a mohel's swift clean schneid is not that great. To an undiscerning observer like me most likely the differences are nil. So does Israel accept anyone with a circumcised penis? Of course not.
Oi, how to think this through?
Ah, I thought, I've got a "bris" kiddush cup that was brought from Germany in 1938. It has my name on it. Of course the engraver misspelled my name, but what the devil.
Oh, I forgot, it didn't include my Hebrew name, and it didn't include my "bris" date, which should have been 8 days after my emergence into the (good?) German air.
My mother claims that I had a bris, but she wasn't in the room, and doesn't know if a mohel did the job or a doctor colleague of my grandfather.
According to my father, I was born in a hospital which had inscribed on it (somewhere, according to my father) "Alt und arm und krank und Jüde, ein vier fach Katastrophe". Perhaps this was a family joke, although I note that my sister used almost the same quote in a book of hers (she claimed it was a bastardization of a poem Heine (1841) wrote:
Translated by Hal Draper.)
"Ein Hospital für arme, kranke Juden,
Für Menschenkinder, welche dreifach elend,
Behaftet mit den bösen drei Gebresten:
Mit Armut, Körperschmerz und Judentum!1
A hospital for sick and needy Jews,
For those poor mortals who are trebly wretched,
With three great evil maladies afflicted:
With poverty and pain and Jewishness.
...
So, I've got no documentary evidence of my "bris". My bar mitzvah took place in a reform synagogue, so I guess its null and void. My wedding took place in the same reform Temple, so I guess my wife is living in sin (as am I, I suppose). Oi. And my children. Well, I can at least stand up and say that I saw his "bris" and I met his mohel. Was it kosher? We have no bris card! We thought so, but now, given the higher standards, perhaps not. After all, the Danish lady's children, brought up Jewish, are now, post hoc ergo propter hoc, goyish. How strange. How deranged.
As for my daughter, my wife, my mother, etc., I've just got their word that they were born of Jewish mothers (which used to make you automatically Jewish). No circumcision for them, that's for damn sure.
Maybe Heine was right about the plague of being Jewish. Certainly choosing it is meshugah.
Maybe the Germans were right; you're Jewish if a "real" German says you are.
- Ein Hospital für arme, kranke Juden,
Für Menschenkinder, welche dreifach elend,
Behaftet mit den bösen drei Gebresten:
Mit Armut, Körperschmerz und Judentum!
Das schlimmste von den dreien ist das letzte,
Das tausendjährige Familienübel,
Die aus dem Niltal mitgeschleppte Plage,
Der altägyptisch ungesunde Glauben.
Unheilbar tiefes Leid! Dagegen helfen
Nicht Dampfbad, Dusche, nicht die Apparate
Der Chirugie, noch all die Arzneien,
Die dieses Haus den siechen Gästen bietet.
Wird einst die Zeit, die ew'ge Göttin, tilgen
Das dunkle Weh, das sich vererbt vom Vater
Herunter auf den Sohn, - wird einst der Enkel
Genesen und vernünftig sein und glücklich?
Ich weiß es nicht! Doch mittlerweile wollen
Wir preisen jenes Herz, das klug und liebreich
Zu lindern suchte, was der Lind'rung fähig,
Zeitlichen Balsam träufelnd in die Wunden.
Der treue Mann! Er baute hier ein Obdach
Für Leiden, welche heilbar durch die Künste
Des Arztes (oder auch des Todes!), sorgte
Für Polster, Labetrank, Wartung und Pflege -
Ein Mann der Tat, tat er, was eben tunlich;
Für gute Werke gab er hin den Taglohn
Am Abend seines Lebens, menschenfreundlich,
Durch Wohltun sich erholend von der Arbeit.
Er gab mit reicher Hand - doch reich're Spiende
Entrollte manchmal seinem Aug' - die Träne,
Die kostbar schöne Träne, die er weinte
Ob der unheilbar großen Brüderkrankhiet. - The worst of these three evils is the last one,
The thousand-year-old family affliction,
The plague they carried from the grim Nile valley,
The old Egyptian faith so long unhealthful.
Incurable deep-seated hurt! No treatment
By vapour bath or douche can help to heal it,
No surgery, nor all the medications,
This hospital can offer to its patients.
Will Time, eternal goddess, some day end it,
Root out this black misfortune that the fathers
Hand down to sons? And some day will the grandsons
Be healed and whole, and rational and happy?
I do not know! But meanwhile let us honour
The heart that sought so lovingly and wisely
To soften the afflictions one can soften,
By pouring timely balm upon the lesions.
The worthy man! He builded here a refuge
For sufferings the doctors' arts could physic -
Or death's could cure, as well! - providing
For beds, refreshments, care, and tender nursing.
A man of deeds, he did what could be done;
A day's wage for good works this man devoted
In his life's evening, out of love of mankind,
To find relief from toil in benefaction.
He gave with open hand - but gifts still richer
Rolled from his eyes at times, the precious teardrops,
The lovely teardrops that he wept lamenting
The great incurable malady of his brothers.
