A common accusation from Jews against Jewish converts is that their children would assimilate and their descendants would cease to be Jewish—and it was apparently true. It’s important to note that the conversion was not considered to have nullified Jewishness. The concern was that Christianity could not preserve Jewish identity—which is not quite the same as Jewishness. Thus there are many Jews who lack Jewish identity. It should be acknowledged that the Spanish crypto Jewish conversos have kept traces of their Jewish ancestry even to this day. Thus not all was lost via assimilation although what little was saved may give little cause to celebrate depending on your point of view.
Hebrew Catholics, “converts”, settling as a community in Israel would arrest the assimilating principle. Assimilation is a fact of diaspora all ethnic groups experience when not living in their native lands. If I use myself as an example, my Jewish side of the family has been in a century and a half long process of assimilating in America. Only I may have undertaken to incorporate into my understanding more about Jewish history and religion than anyone in my family going even back to even my great grandparents.
What kept their families Jewish is what keeps all groups ethnic in the United States. The ethnic community they live in. Today, we are in a more fluid time where it is more common for people of different ethnicities to live in the same communities and often marry outside their ethnicity. I myself am half Afro-Latino. From a Catholic perspective I of course support the mixing of peoples. From a Jewish perspective, there is theologically no issue with ethnic mixing as the Jews were always incorporating different people into Israel from their beginning. The concern has traditionally not been about passing on the Jewish race. It has been passing on Jewishness, which is beyond the bounds of race.
This is similar to Catholic lineage in that we are very concerned that our descendants will remain Catholic. The Catholic difference is that it is a supernatural body which requires baptism to enter into. No one is born Catholic like they would be born Jewish. This is why Catholics practice infant baptism. Baptism ensures a greater familial and ethnic bonding within the Catholic faith. While the universal of baptism typologically originates directly from the particular of circumcision, it differs in that a Jew who is not circumicised is still a Jew while an unbaptized person is not a Catholic. Thus a “baptism” into Judaism is more primary, as it happens at birth from a Jewish mother.
Looking at these discrepancies we also find that there is no structural conflict to prevent a person being both Jewish and Catholic (as I am). I suppose in these details we find validation for Halacha that a Jew is one born of a Jewish mother and why. Jewish and Christians both require the baptisms into new life. One is Corporal. The other of Heaven.
I am not one to argue the Halacha that a Jew is one with a Jewish mother. However, I assert that those of the seed of a Jewish father, Zera Yisrael, are still corporal Israel. They retain their share in Israelite election. The main promise to Israel is that they will be returned to the Land. Zera Yisrael along with those who maintained traditions called Jews.
This is another track that leads us to the importance of the Hebrew Catholic identity which is unencumbered by the Rabbinic Halacha of who is in and who is out. All Hebrews who are of either the seed or the womb (or of course both) are in.
When we understand the teaching of the one flesh of marriage, we see that matrimony transmits full identity of parents on to offspring. Not only this, adoption also confers these identities. We can look to Jesus’ father Joseph who transmitted his full royal lineage to Jesus even though Jesus was not of Joseph’s seed. We can also look at Jewish levirate marriage where a brother marries his deceased brothers’ wife yet their children are attributed to the deceased even though the seed was from the living brother. This is only to demonstrate that the marriage sacrament, and adoption, has a special power to transmit identities, lineages and rights beyond corporal lines.
So I return to our Hebrew Catholic Zionist Settlers in the Land of Israel. The Hebrew Catholic Israeli possesses everything all other Israelites might lack. His identity is as transmissible by birth, marriage and adoption as his Catholicism is by baptism. His religion is centered on the ever present sacrifice unbounded by time and space. But most importantly to the point of ending assimilation, he lives on the land God promised his ancestors. Diaspora is over. He has nearly completed the Biblical circuit. He is an eschatological being.
One has difficulty seeing what mission is left for the Hebrew Catholic Israeli. He has fulfilled history. Of course there is more he must do. But I will save it for another essay.
