THE CASE OF BROTHER DANIEL

A person who is born Jewish always retain his Jewish STATUS. This is a HALACHIC or religious status. Once a Jew, always a Jew. However the Jewishness of a Hebrew-Christian<font color="#ff0000">*</font> has no real meaning in the external world. He does not live as a Jew among Jews, and it is only in the context of living among Jews and being ACCEPTED by them as a Jew that Jewishness has any real meaning.

Take, as an example, the case of the wife of an acquaintance of mine. She is Jewish but her life is devoted to the life of Lutheranism to which see converted when she married him.

Her children are taught that they are Christians first and foremost -who have a Jewish mother. Authentic Jewish children hang out with other Jewish children and go to school with them, and play with them, and pray with them. If a Jewish child is not of a religious family, at least he does not pray with gentiles. Even as an APIKORES (black slider), the Jewish community RECOGNIZES MY JEWISHNESS and allows me to participate in the religious life of the community when I choose to.

Let me demonstrate what I mean when I say that the Hebrew-Christians stop being Jewish by relating the story of Brother Daniel. This case attained wide notariety in the 1960s.

Brother Daniel was born a Jew. His parents put him in a monastery as a child to save him from the Nazis. The Catholics at the monastery betrayed his parents by bringing Daniel up as a Catholic. As an adult, he becaome a lay Brother, and later a priest. During the 1960s, he went to Israel and demanded to be given immediate citizenship as a Jew under the Law of Return. He cited the rabbinic dictum that even a Jew who converts to another religion HALACHICALLY remains a Jew. By the way, since this definition of Jewishness is essentially a RELIGIOUS definition, it all the more is an afront to Jews when a Jew goes to an alien religion and wishes to be recognized as a Jew ACCORDING TO THE RELIGION HE HAS ABANDONED!

The authorities in Israel were non-plussed because this was the first case of a convert to Christianity asking to be recognized as a Jew under Israeli law. Actually this was a test case set up by the Vatican itself. If Brother Daniel could be recognized as a Jew under the Law of Return, this would set the precedence for the hundreds of other Brother Daniels that the Vatican had waiting in the wings to flood into Israel. If many Catholics who were HALLACHICLLY Jewish took up residence in Israel AS ISRAELI JEWS, the whole idea of who is an Israeli Jew would alter drastically because the Jews who set up Israel recognized philisophically and historically that being a Jew means that you do not repudiate the Jewish religion.

APIKORSIM do not repudiate the Jewish religion. They still recognize that Judaism is their religion even though they have problems with certain aspects of it, and they do not try to make their fellow Jews become APIKORSIM or abandon Judaism in any way.

The case of Brother Daniel was not handled by the Israeli Rabbinate who refused to have anything to do with it. It was handled by the Israeli Supreme Court because the Law of Return was set up by the government of Israel, not by the religious authorities. The Israeli Supreme Court came up with the following decision which then became THE over-riding ATTITUDE of Jews all over the world. Yes, they agreed that in SOME WAY Daniel was Jewish (they recognized his HALLACHIC STATUS). Nevertheless because he had converted to religion alien to the Jewish religion and antithetical to the historic Jewish People, he had in effect VOLUNTARILY GIVEN UP A GREAT PART OF HIS JEWISHNESS, SEPARATING HIMSELF FROM THE HISTORIC JEWISH COMMUNITY AND FROM JEWISH DESTINY AND JEWISH CONTINUITY. Therefore their decision was that Brother Daniel NOT be recognized as a Jew UNDER THE LAW OF RETURN, and that the only way he be given permission to attain Israeli citizenship be as ANY OTHER NON-JEW! Ultimately Daniel decided to settle in Israel as A NON-JEWISH CITIZEN!

The Jewish attitude toward Hebrew-Christians is that their Jewishness does not matter IN ANY SIGNIFICANT JEWISH WAY, and for all extents and purposes they are to be looked upon and treated as gentiles, and worse than gentiles because they are the Benedict Arnolds of the Jewish People. They are not to be allowed burial in a Jewish cemetary and there is to be no social or religious intercourse with them. Essentially they are dead, and in many families the prayer for the dead is said over them. What the Jewish Community says about them is that ALTHOUGH THEY ARE JEWS, THEY ARE DEAD JEWS!

*Hebrew-Christians are people who belong to groups such as Jews For Jesus