"The Sy Empire" (NYT Mag, Oct 14, 07) was a fascinating read, and I recommend it to anyone who has ever wrestled with questions regarding one's faith, family and community.
In a nutshell, the piece is about the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn, and how that community is shaped by a marital edict: community members may not marry converted Jews or non-Jewish people. And to ensure that converts don't somehow sneak in, any prospective fiancees or fiances are investigated to ensure that at least three generations are bona fide Jewish; this must be certified by an Orthodox rabbi.
As the story reports:
“Never accept a convert or a child born of a convert,” [chief rabbi Jakie] Kassin told me by phone, summarizing the message. “Push them away with strong hands from our community. Why? Because we don’t want gentile characteristics.”
As someone who was born and raised in a non-Jewish tradition, I can only look at this with an outsider's perspective. It's the people who elect to leave who intrigue me. How do you turn your back on that? What are you turning toward?
See, my mind went automatically to genetic bottlenecking and what they were doing to avoid inheritable illnesses.
Posted by: Kerry | 2007.10.15 at 15:18
I think the loophole is that they can marry any Orthodox Jew, not just other SYs, so the genepool stays a bit more heterogeneous.
Posted by: enjil | 2007.10.16 at 09:50
But it's only if you've got 3+ generations of Orthodox going down--I still think that's like the Iowa Amish marrying the PA Amish.
Posted by: Kerry | 2007.10.16 at 10:49
Ha, that is true. Maybe that "new influx" from Syria has given them a short-term influx of new blood? Or maybe this is something they don't talk about to the press.
Posted by: enjil | 2007.10.16 at 11:23
I think the loophole is that they can marry any Orthodox Jew, not just other SYs, so the genepool stays a bit more heterogeneous.
Yeah, they say that, but the whole Edict thing is set up to actively discourage marriage outside the SY/Sephardic community. The whole situation appears to a helluva lot more about flipping the Ashkenazi a giant bird of payback then preventing Gentile intermarriage. From the article:
"That means producing proof, going back at least three generations and attested to by an Orthodox rabbi, of the candidates’ kosher bona fides. This disqualifies the vast majority of American Jews, who have no such proof."
Nearly all synagogue records of the Ashkenazi went up in smoke, along with the synagogue members themselves, during the Shoah. The SYs and other Sephardic Jews? Not so much.
In short, the whole shebang is more about internecine Jewish conflict than Jew/Gentile conflict (although kudos to Chafets for bringing up the third rail of Judaism, which is its issue with racial diversity: the Ashkenazi look down on the SY who look down on the Sephards and everyone treats the black Ethiopian Jews like crap). What's Hebrew for "high yellow"?
Posted by: Shotrock | 2007.10.16 at 17:04