This title is a reference to an often asked question of the last few centuries regarding Jewish identity, “Who is a Jew?”. Well, we just made it more complicated by injecting Hebrew Catholic identity into the mix. Hopefully by the end of this paper Hebrew Catholic identity will be much easier to understand than Jewish identity. I suppose we must attempt to answer the question “Who is a Jew” as best we can so we can resolve it for Hebrew Catholics.
A religious orthodox Jew is either an individual born of a Jewish mother or a convert. An Orthodox Jew is uninterested in other corporal ties individuals might have to the Jewish people like a Jewish father. This is not due to personal discriminatory preference. It is simply because there is no accommodation for such individuals in Rabbinic Law. There are very big natural problems that come from this kind of exclusion of blood relatives. And we must appeal to God himself to illuminate this horrible mysterious act of rectification, as we remember the Israelites who by choice abandoned their foreign wives and children in the time of Ezra. I can’t leave you hanging here as it’s too terrible. The Sinaitic covenant permitted divorce for such a situation whereas the New Covenant does not. Regardless if they be mixed Jewish with Gentile or even Christian and pagan: No divorce.
We must look at secular Jews now, the majority of identified Jews, at 90%. Although I personally am hesitant to take part in the panoply of secular Jewish identity issues, it cannot be denied they are the face of Jewishness in our time. Secular Jewish identity is untethered to orthodox religious law (Halacha) of “who is a Jew”. I would arbitrarily suggest that anyone with one Jewish grandparent from either paternal or maternal sides can and should claim their secular Jewish identity (it could go back as far as anyone feels a connection to). There is the reason of course that we should honor our ancestors. But there is a more serious reason those with Jewish ancestors should identify as secular Jews and that is antisemitism.
To get a little personal, my wife’s great grandmother in Eastern Europe had a Jewish grandfather. When the Nazis came to their town to murder the Jews they were looking at genealogies as far as six generations back. My wife’s great grandmother and grandmother had to conceal their distant Jewish lineage at all cost to survive. The blessed sacrament I have with my wife and our children would not exist if this had been exposed. Every single Jew in their town was killed.
This brings me to a frustration with the Rabbinic Law of exclusion. Countless Secular (non-Halachic) Jews were murdered in the Holocaust and are further denied the dignity of the spiritual purpose to their deaths. To the religious mind, although awful to contemplate, the Holocaust (sacrifice) had profound meaning. The Catholic now understands (or should understand) that the Jew is part of the suffering corporal body of Christ. This special connection to the Lord and with his suffering absolutely applies to the secular Jew. (I’m aware St. Edith Stein has detailed how Jewish suffering works within the body of Christ but admittedly have not yet read her Science of the Cross even though I do own it.)
I believe we’ve now clearly laid out 2 kinds of qualifiers for what is a Hebrew Catholic. A rabbinically defined Jew and a secular Jew (one with at least one Jewish grandparent—my own suggestion). I’ll say this now and reiterate later. There is absolutely no “caste” distinction between Hebrew Catholics (nor is their caste among Jews and Christians). We are required to be aware and respectful of “who is a Jew” in light of Rabbinical Judaism but we must view everything in the light of Christ and the New Covenant.
We must reach further and describe another type of Hebrew Catholic. This is an individual with very remote Jewish ancestry to the point they would not comfortably identify even as a secular Jew. As I shared, my wife has very distant Jewish ancestry and does not identify as Jewish although has always been aware of her remote Jewish ancestor(s) (and in her grandmothers’ case its potential consequences). Such a person is invited to bring in Jewish ethnic traditions into their Catholic traditions effectively harmonizing their mysterious distant ancestry. This kind of person, by conscious choice, can and should declare themselves a Hebrew Catholic.
The fourth Hebrew Catholic, the spouse, is also a Hebrew Catholic because husband and wife are one flesh (as discussed elsewhere).
And to reiterate there is no “caste” of Hebrew Catholics. It is true that some of us have Jewish mothers and thus oddly and maybe even legitimately belong to two religions. There’s a bridge building role that some Halachicly Jewish Hebrew Catholics could serve to forge the much needed spiritual connection between the Catholic and Jewish world. But the way here is extremely rare. A Catholic Jew like our beloved Brother Gilbert is called and able to to walk fully as both a Jew and a Catholic because he is consecrated to religious life. Among lay Catholics I believe this calling to be rare and extraordinary. Effectively Judaism would be a kind of religious vocation within (or possibly adjacent to) Catholicism. Within all Hebrew Catholics we would support qualifying Observant Jewish Hebrew Catholics much like we do our religious priests, fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters. Just as we recognize not every person can qualify for the priesthood on account of their birth (the male requirement) we would take a similar understanding to the Judaically Observant Jewish Hebrew Catholics. As most Catholics are not called and/or are excluded from Holy Orders so too would most Hebrew Catholics be excluded from living a fully Jewishly observant life in conjunction with their Catholic obligations. To name one, myself, while my wife is Hebrew Catholic because I am she is still not considered Jewish under Halachic law and thus we could not fully meet the requirement of Jewish life without Jewish conversion. My understanding is that orthodox Jewish conversion requires a renunciation of the Catholic faith which is of course impossible.
There may be one group already primed to make this electrifying connection: Observant Messianic Jews. If Messianic Jews accepted the Catholic Faith and its sacraments the Observant Jewish order within Hebrew Catholics would instantly appear whole cloth.
Now we can understand all the pieces of a reconciliation bridge connection between Judaism and Catholicism and the essential roles different groups will play. The bridge begins with lay Catholics who connect to the Apostolic priesthood who connect to consecrated Religious (like Brother Gilbert who fully live Catholic and Jewish) who connect to lay Hebrew Catholics who connect to Messianic Observant Jewish Catholics who properly relate to and connect with all Jews (outside the church).
