[Avodah] Baptized Jews and the Law Of Return

[Micha Berger]

On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 11:18:17AM -0400, Zev Sero via Areivim wrote:
:                   I don't understand why it would need such long
: deliberation or a long teshuvah to demonstrate what every school
: child knows, that a mumar remains a Jew.

You should see R' Aharon Lichtenstein's "Brother Daniel and the
Jewish Fraternity". (Reprinted in Leaves of Faith. ch 3 pp 57-84)
http://books.google.com/books?id=_QshqTu9nGIC&lpg=PA363&pg=PA57#v=onepage
(When I hit that URL, the article was available on Google Books in
its entirety.)

It isn't as open-and-shut that "Yisrael, af al pi shechat'ah, Yisra'el
hu" is as universal or as much as a given as most of us were taught
in school.

We think in terms of Yevamos 47b, that a geir who *later* reverts to
practicing his old religion is stil a Jew, and if he gets married the
qiddushin are chal.

But in Yevamos 16b, after R Asi is chosheish that a marriage to a
non-Jew might be a marriage to someone from one of the 10 shevatim,
Shemu'el responds that the 10 shevatim aren't Yisrael anymore. Invoking
Hoacheia 17a.

Chullin 6a invokes parallel reasoning to excluding the Kusim even though
their conversation had been accepted for generations before then.

RAL offers three different approaches to resolution. He ends up siding with
#3, that the convert in Yevamos is someone who reverts to the rituals of
his old religion. But someone who goes beyond that to give up their
Jewish identity would indeed not be Jews.

Including, RAL writes, Brother Daniel or any other meshumad applying for
citizenship under the Law of Return.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When one truly looks at everyone's good side,
micha at aishdas.org        others come to love him very naturally, and
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Fax: (270) 514-1507                        - Rabbi AY Kook