There are, of course, limits to this sense of unity. Consider the contentious
disagreement over whether or not the Beta Yisrael, the Jews of Ethiopia, could
be accepted as Jews when they immigrated to Israel. Largely cut off from the
authority and development of Rabbinic Judaism, the Jewishness of Ethiopian
Jews, though they were bearers of a tradition that was as old as Rabbinic
Judaism, was seen as problematic. In a sense, the Ethiopian dilemma was a
more complex incarnation of the Brother Daniel case. The latter claimed that
Jewishness could be defined in non-religious – that is, national – terms;
Brother Daniel’s request to be defined as Jewish was denied on the grounds
that he belonged to another religious faith. The Ethiopian Jews, though,
regarded themselves as part of the people of Israel, in religious and not only
national or ethnic terms. Thus, the controversy over the identity of Ethiopian
Jews reflected the centrality of Rabbinic Judaism in defining Jewishness,
even at a time and in a place where most Jews regarded the practice of
Judaism with indifference or outright disdain.
Equally problematic and more far-reaching, perhaps, is the recent diver-
gence from a uniform definition of who is a Jew. I refer to the Reform
Movement’s redefinition of this standard according to patrilineal descent –
that is, it defines as a Jew a child of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father.
This decision immensely complicated what had been hitherto a largely
unselfconscious definition of a Jew as the child of a Jewish mother or of one
who had been properly converted.
More typical, even today, is the ability of Jewish individuals, families, or
entire communities to transplant themselves to a radically new location and
join the existing Jewish community. An interesting example in this regard is
the recent immigration of Persian Jews from Iran to America, mainly to the
Greater New York and Los Angeles areas. Persian Jews who arrived in
America prior to 1979, meaning those who arrived willingly rather than flee-
ing from Islamic fundamentalism, were generally willing to acculturate
themselves and their children. Though still firmly attached to their language
and culture, these earlier Persian immigrants embraced much of American
culture. Persian Jews who arrived after 1979 resisted Americanization beyond
a certain point more vehemently. Regardless of when they arrived, though,
many still maintain a powerful sense of ethnic, cultural insularity, exerting
powerful social pressure to marry within the Persian Jewish community.
Despite the cultural separation that many Persian Jews strive to maintain,
though, their sense of kinship with non-Persian Jews is far greater and quali-
tatively different than any sense of kinship with non-Jews. This is true even –
or perhaps especially – with those from their own homeland. They regard
Jews from Iran as Persian, and Muslims from Iran as Iranian. The arrival of
Persian and Russian Jewish immigrants to America is but the latest example
of world Jewry, transformed yet again through migration, finding new ways
to exist as a minority in the diaspora.
Conclusion: world Jewry faces the twenty-first century 243