A nation dedicated to gathering in the Jews of the world, Israel has never been able to answer a question basic to its existence: What is a Jew? Does a Jew become Jewish by birth, or by religious observance, or by mere inclination? Aware that providing an answer could rip apart the government's delicately balanced coalition of agnostic secularists and ultra-religious rabbis, the Knesset has never officially defined a Jew, although the word appears in many laws. Last week five justices of the Israeli Supreme Court retired to decide whether or not a tiny, bearded Roman Catholic monk can be a Jew—and in doing so they may settle the basic question at last.
Immigration authorities use an administrative order that defines a Jew as anybody who professes to be one and has not embraced another religion. That definition would include the Orthodox Jew that Oswald Rufeisen was at birth; but it excludes Father Daniel, the Carmelite friar that Rufeisen became after his conversion to Catholicism. Since his arrival in 1959, Father Daniel has refused to accept citizenship except as a Jewish immigrant, and thus automatically an Israeli citizen under the 1950 Law of Return.
Last month he went to court to demand that the government show why he should not be declared a Jew. "He is forcing us to say things clearly," said Herzl Rosenblum, editor of the Tel Aviv Yediot Aharonot. "If the court decides he is a Jew, it will be a catastrophe for world Judaism. If the court decides against him, the gentile public will regard us as a theocracy."
Saved by Nuns. Anunlikely agent of catastrophe, Father Daniel has been a fervent Zionist since his childhood in Poland. During the German occupation he posed as a Silesian Christian, and, working as a police interpreter, he managed to save half the Jewish community of the town of Mir by warning them of an imminent Nazi roundup. Rufeisen spent the next 15 months hiding in a convent. Baptized by the nuns, Father Daniel joined the Carmelite Order in Poland, gave up his Polish passport to come to Israel.
"My religion is Catholic," says Daniel, "but my ethnic origin is and always will be Jewish. I have no other nationality.
If I am not a Jew what am I? I did not accept Christianity to leave my people. It added to my Judaism. I feel as a Jew."
Swallowed byChristianity? "It is not enough for the applicant to say he feels Jewish." argued State Attorney Zvi Bar-Niv. "Jewishness is not a club based on feeling." Citing authorities from the Talmud to St. Augustine, Bar-Niv insisted that "an Israeli may be Christian, Moslem or atheist. But 'Jew' connotes not belonging to any other religion. The attribute of a Jew is a common culture, and religion is the basis of that culture whether you observe it or not." Angry editorials in the Orthodox press were heavy with the ancient Jewish fear of being swallowed up by Christianity.
Israel's secularist majority—long chafing under rabbinical control of marriage and other personal affairs—support Daniel, who predicts his victory would be "a small stone that will start an avalanche" for religious freedom. Argued Father Daniel's counsel, Shalom Yaron: "The time has come for people in Israel to be like all others. Since the state considers an atheist a Jew, what is the logic in not considering a converted Jew a Jew?"