The rights of citizenship

Editorial

Under the Law of Return, anyone with one Jewish grandparent is welcome to become a citizen of Israel. Or perhaps "welcome" is too generous a word. After all, a person who may be considered Jewish enough to be granted citizenship in Israel is not necessarily Jewish enough to be treated in the same way as other Jewish citizens.

The relatively accepting premise of the Law of Return - instituted at the inception of the state, when a growing population was required to settle the new Israel - is not reflected in the daily realities of Israeli life.

If a person does not have a Jewish mother, one's citizenship takes on a slightly different hue. One is not considered completely Jewish under Israeli law. A similar situation exists for Reform and Conservative Jews, whose marriages will not be recognized by the state unless presided over by an Orthodox rabbi. For this reason, many secular or non-Orthodox religious Jews travel to Europe or elsewhere to be married in the style of Judaism they prefer. Though this is certainly an inconvenience and a slightly degrading - and ironic - aspect of living in the Jewish state, it is hardly the end of the world. There are worse places to spend one's wedding day than a Greek island or the sun-dappled shores of Cyprus.

But an incident occurred last week that reminds us of the macabre realities of state-adopted halachah; of the inflexibility that comes when religion and politics become too intertwined.

Staff Sgt. Michael Oxman was one of six Israeli soldiers killed in the terrorist attack on an Israeli outpost in the West Bank. A hero, he was buried in a military cemetery. But, while his five comrades were buried in the Jewish section, he was set apart, buried in a place reserved for non-Jews.

Oxman considered himself a Jew, as did his father before him. His mother, however, is not Jewish and so, though he was Jewish enough to live in the Jewish state, to fight for it, defend it and die for it, he was not Jewish enough to be granted the dignity of being buried in the same hallowed ground as his fellow soldiers.

The issue has become more common since the advent of large-scale immigration from the former Soviet Union. Many people with only a tepid connection to their Judaism escaped the economic devastation of Russia by whatever means they could. The Law of Return provides one such outlet. It was this law that allowed Oxman and his family to migrate from Ukraine.

It is true that, anywhere in the world, Oxman's paternal Jewish line would not satisfy the definition of a Jew by almost any rabbi, whether Orthodox, Conservative or Reform. It is also true that Jewish customs around death and dying are among the most circumscribed and sacred processes in our tradition.

However, if parsing the definition of Jewishness leads to situations like that of Oxman, something is askew. If the law says that burying soldiers like Oxman in a Jewish cemetery is too much of a theological compromise, then maybe people like him should not be expected to make such sacrifices. If the consequences of defending one's country lead to this kind of posthumous degradation, perhaps Israel should compromise on the other side, too, and ensure that "non-Jews" like Oxman, who do not have full citizenship rights, also do not have the obligation to be put in harm's way.

^TOP