11/22/2023 0 Comments International unearth family secretsIn the past year, the organization has seen up to 50 cases where families have been asked to undergo DNA tests to certify their Jewishness. Farber, who has been living in Israel since the 1990s, is the director of Itim, the Jewish Life Information Center, an organization that helps Israeli Jews navigate state-administered matters of Jewish life, like marriage and conversion. But as was reported in Haaretz, and later confirmed by David Lau, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, in the past year, the rabbis have been requesting that some people undergo a DNA test to verify their claim before being allowed to marry.įor many Israelis, news that the rabbinical judges were turning to DNA testing was shocking, but for Seth Farber, an American-born Orthodox rabbi, it came as no surprise. In the past, confirming Jewishness in the absence of documentation has involved contacting rabbis from the countries where people originate or tracking genealogical records back to prove religious continuity along the matrilineal line. While for most Israeli Jews this simply involves handing over their mother’s birth or marriage certificate, for many recent immigrants to Israel, who often come from communities where being Jewish is defined differently or documentation is scarce, producing evidence that satisfies the Rabbinate’s standard of proof can be impossible. This means that when a Jewish couple want to tie the knot, they are required by law to prove their Jewishness to the Rabbinate according to Orthodox tradition, which defines Jewish ancestry as being passed down through the mother. Jews can marry Jews, but intermarriage with Muslims or Christians is legally unacknowledged. In Israel, matrimonial law is religious, not civil. In February of this year, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, reported that the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the peak religious authority in the country, had been requesting DNA tests to confirm Jewishness before issuing some marriage licenses. What is perhaps more concerning, though, is how authorities around the world are also beginning to use DNA to not only identify individuals, but to categorize and discriminate against entire groups of people. In the past year, law enforcement has become increasingly adept at using genetic data to solve cold cases a recent study shows that even if you haven’t taken a test, chances are you can be identified by authorities via genealogical sleuthing. For most, like my parents, genetic identity is assimilated into an existing life story with relative ease, while for others, the test can unearth family secrets or capsize personal narratives around ethnic heritage.īut as these genetic databases grow, genetic identity is reshaping not only how we understand ourselves, but how we can be identified by others. As of the beginning of this year, more than 26 million people have taken at-home DNA tests. The idea of having an ancient identity “confirmed” by modern science was too alluring. If I ever mentioned that someone “looked Jewish” my grandmother would respond, “Oh really? And what exactly does a Jew look like?” Yet evidently, this wariness of ethnic categorization didn’t stop my parents from sending swab samples from the inside of their cheeks off to a direct-to-consumer genetic testing company. The raw memory of this racism made any suggestion of Jewish ethnicity slightly taboo in my family. After all, the reason my grandparents had to leave the towns and villages of their ancestors was because of ethno-nationalism emboldened by a racialized conception of Jewishness as something that exists “in the blood”. According to family lore, my forebears lived in small towns and villages in eastern Europe for at least a few hundred years, where they kept their traditions and married within the community, up until the Holocaust, when they were either murdered or dispersed.īut still, there was something disconcerting about our Jewishness being “confirmed” by a biological test. This genetic explanation of my Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry came as no surprise.
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