[Avodah] Ahab

[Daniel M. Israel via Avodah]

On Nov 26, 2015, at 1:44 PM, Saul Guberman via Avodah <avodah at lists.aishdas.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 26, 2015 at 2:20 PM, Zev Sero <zev at sero.name <mailto:zev at sero.name>> wrote:
> On 11/26/2015 10:21 AM, Saul Guberman via Avodah wrote:
> So was the switch to matrilineal descent from a takana Ezra or before?
> 
> There was no switch.  It's de'oraisa.
> 
> Please site a source.  All of the Avos (assuming they kept all the mitzvos) plus Moshe married non jews. 

I’m somewhat surprised to see anyone on this list assuming there was a switch.  It’s a position I normally associate with people who do not believe in Torah min hashamayim.

It seems self-evident that the criteria for Jewishness must be d’oraisa.  (And what conclusions to draw from things that happened pre-SInai are not obvious.)  However, in a recent conversation with a non-religious co-worker about the nature of change in halacha (he was making an argument of the “many things have changed, why not this” variety), I found myself thinking about this very halacha.  The proof found in the Gemara in Kiddushin relies on a non-obvious reading of the verse; in fact, the simplest p’shat would, IMHO, lead to the opposite conclusion, namely that decent is patrilineal.  It would be in keeping with my understanding of how halacha worked in the time of the Sanhedrin to suggest that originally the law was patrilineal, based on the same verse, and that a later Sanhedrin overruled this based on an different drash.

Now this would solve certain problems in Nach, but would raise many others.  But is there any reason that positing such a scenario would place someone outside of “Orthodoxy”?

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu

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