Question for you: How was this development process different for *Karaite* halakha, other than for the fact that the Karaites never accepted the Mishnah to begin with due to their belief that the Mishnah was created by man and thus, while being worthy of respect, was not binding on themselves?
Good question. I'm hardly an expert on Karaites, but my understanding is that Karaites became a thing roughly in the 9th century, so a lot later than the Mishna and Talmud. As you say, they dumped the body of law we call the Oral Law, including the Mishna - they seem to hold that only the Written Torah has formal authority, and that no-one is bound by precedent. However, unsurprisingly, they then simply went on to develop their own body of precedents, developed by their own definitely-not-rabbis. I assume this body of precedents is, in practice, *roughly* as central to Karaite practice as the Oral Law is to us Rabbinites-they definitely don't reinvent the wheel every generation, and I assume they don't let individuals just do their own thing. Maybe it's a bit more flexible in some way. I'm afraid I don't really know.
Very interesting; thank you! BTW, do you think that the Karaites would have still developed without the creation of Islam a couple of centuries beforehand? AFAIK, the Karaites were historically the strongest in the Muslim world, though there were also a few of them in Europe.
By the way, what do you think that it would realistically take for the matrilineal descent rule to be abandoned and replaced with bilinear descent? Is it in general just asking for too much due to this precedent being way too entrenched? Or could future developments, such as the development of artificial sperm from female skin cells through IVG (in-vitro gametogenesis), the development of artificial eggs from male skin cells through IVG, and uterus transplants for trans women and perhaps even cis men result in a fundamental transformation of halakha in regards to this? After all, if men are going to be capable of performing the female roles in reproduction, and women are going to be capable of performing the male roles in reproduction, does it really make sense to insist on a sex-specific way for passing on Jewish status?
Honestly, the reason that I care so much about this is because some right-wing religious Jewish nationalists have used the traditional halakha to justify their efforts to repeal the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return, which would prohibit people who are demographically similar to myself (one or two Jewish grandfathers but no Jewish grandmothers; I myself am already a dual US-Israeli citizen) from immigrating to Israel, which I vehemently oppose. I like the fact that apparently people such as myself, with an unbroken paternal Jewish line, would already be considered Jewish by the Karaites even if we only have a single Jewish paternal grandfather.
I'm afraid I really don't know enough about the Karaites to say.
The rule of matrilineal descent is recorded in the Mishna (Kiddushin 3:12) without dissenting opinions, and is based on a derasha ascribed in both Talmudim to R. Shimon ben Yohai, which certainly makes it very old, and as far as I know is not contradicted anywhere in Hazal, and has certainly been unanimously accepted in Rabbinic communities for a long time. To me, that's the kind of unanimity that earns a law at least the presumption of being Sanhedrinal. If one were to take a more sceptical approach, it's still at least conventional in authority, and it seems there's no other precedent from which to make an alternative case. But really, this is a rule that's always going to be treated as Sanhedrinal (if not Sinaitic) law, and I think that makes sense.
FWIW, I’m specifically talking about this specific exception, mentioned in Rabbi Louis Jacobs’s article above:
“With the exception of the Rabbi in the Jerusalem Talmud (Qiddushin, 3:12) who permitted the child of a gentile mother and Jewish father to be circumcised on the Sabbath and whose opinion was vehemently rejected,”
Why did his logic deviate from that of everyone else?
The way that this article argues, though, the matrilineal descent rule developed as a rejection of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, but if one rejects the traditional halakhic view of intermarriage as being banned, can’t this issue be reconsidered as well?
It is interesting, though, that the Mishnah originally declared the children of a Jewish woman and a non-Jewish man to be mamzerim, but later rabbis changed their minds in regards to this. The Biblical prohibition against kohens marrying converts and divorcees was also eventually overturned by the US Conservative Jewish movement.
In any case, there does appear to be a single rabbi mentioned here who did support patrilineal descent:
The ban on intermarriage, already attested to in the book of Ezra, is without a doubt formal national law, maybe even Sinaitic. Only a Sanhedrin can overturn it, and it's hard to avoid the conclusion than a rabbi instructing otherwise is a zaken mamre.
BTW, question: If Israel will ever become a halakha state (God forbid!), is there any chance that a new Sanhedrin will then be created and that it could replace matrilineal descent with bilinear descent? Repealing the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return will have very limited value for Israeli right-wingers several decades from now because the pool of eligible ex-USSR immigrants to Israel will be massively less severely decades from now than it currently is. Thus, the main purpose of a repeal of the Grandchild Clause several decades from now would be to severely piss off Western Jews. But Israel is going to have many more non-halakhically-Jewish citizens by then, which might raise the question as to whether a new Sanhedrin can actually do anything to improve their status.
Question for you: How was this development process different for *Karaite* halakha, other than for the fact that the Karaites never accepted the Mishnah to begin with due to their belief that the Mishnah was created by man and thus, while being worthy of respect, was not binding on themselves?
Good question. I'm hardly an expert on Karaites, but my understanding is that Karaites became a thing roughly in the 9th century, so a lot later than the Mishna and Talmud. As you say, they dumped the body of law we call the Oral Law, including the Mishna - they seem to hold that only the Written Torah has formal authority, and that no-one is bound by precedent. However, unsurprisingly, they then simply went on to develop their own body of precedents, developed by their own definitely-not-rabbis. I assume this body of precedents is, in practice, *roughly* as central to Karaite practice as the Oral Law is to us Rabbinites-they definitely don't reinvent the wheel every generation, and I assume they don't let individuals just do their own thing. Maybe it's a bit more flexible in some way. I'm afraid I don't really know.
Very interesting; thank you! BTW, do you think that the Karaites would have still developed without the creation of Islam a couple of centuries beforehand? AFAIK, the Karaites were historically the strongest in the Muslim world, though there were also a few of them in Europe.
By the way, what do you think that it would realistically take for the matrilineal descent rule to be abandoned and replaced with bilinear descent? Is it in general just asking for too much due to this precedent being way too entrenched? Or could future developments, such as the development of artificial sperm from female skin cells through IVG (in-vitro gametogenesis), the development of artificial eggs from male skin cells through IVG, and uterus transplants for trans women and perhaps even cis men result in a fundamental transformation of halakha in regards to this? After all, if men are going to be capable of performing the female roles in reproduction, and women are going to be capable of performing the male roles in reproduction, does it really make sense to insist on a sex-specific way for passing on Jewish status?
Honestly, the reason that I care so much about this is because some right-wing religious Jewish nationalists have used the traditional halakha to justify their efforts to repeal the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return, which would prohibit people who are demographically similar to myself (one or two Jewish grandfathers but no Jewish grandmothers; I myself am already a dual US-Israeli citizen) from immigrating to Israel, which I vehemently oppose. I like the fact that apparently people such as myself, with an unbroken paternal Jewish line, would already be considered Jewish by the Karaites even if we only have a single Jewish paternal grandfather.
I'm afraid I really don't know enough about the Karaites to say.
The rule of matrilineal descent is recorded in the Mishna (Kiddushin 3:12) without dissenting opinions, and is based on a derasha ascribed in both Talmudim to R. Shimon ben Yohai, which certainly makes it very old, and as far as I know is not contradicted anywhere in Hazal, and has certainly been unanimously accepted in Rabbinic communities for a long time. To me, that's the kind of unanimity that earns a law at least the presumption of being Sanhedrinal. If one were to take a more sceptical approach, it's still at least conventional in authority, and it seems there's no other precedent from which to make an alternative case. But really, this is a rule that's always going to be treated as Sanhedrinal (if not Sinaitic) law, and I think that makes sense.
FWIW, I’m specifically talking about this specific exception, mentioned in Rabbi Louis Jacobs’s article above:
“With the exception of the Rabbi in the Jerusalem Talmud (Qiddushin, 3:12) who permitted the child of a gentile mother and Jewish father to be circumcised on the Sabbath and whose opinion was vehemently rejected,”
Why did his logic deviate from that of everyone else?
The way that this article argues, though, the matrilineal descent rule developed as a rejection of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, but if one rejects the traditional halakhic view of intermarriage as being banned, can’t this issue be reconsidered as well?
https://rabbionanarrowbridge.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-principle-that-wasnt-re-evaluation.html
It is interesting, though, that the Mishnah originally declared the children of a Jewish woman and a non-Jewish man to be mamzerim, but later rabbis changed their minds in regards to this. The Biblical prohibition against kohens marrying converts and divorcees was also eventually overturned by the US Conservative Jewish movement.
In any case, there does appear to be a single rabbi mentioned here who did support patrilineal descent:
https://web.archive.org/web/20171206005857/https://louisjacobs.org/articles/there-is-no-problem-of-descent/
His opinion was rejected, of course, but it’s interesting that it appears that the Karaites have independently reached a similar conclusion later on.
The ban on intermarriage, already attested to in the book of Ezra, is without a doubt formal national law, maybe even Sinaitic. Only a Sanhedrin can overturn it, and it's hard to avoid the conclusion than a rabbi instructing otherwise is a zaken mamre.
BTW, question: If Israel will ever become a halakha state (God forbid!), is there any chance that a new Sanhedrin will then be created and that it could replace matrilineal descent with bilinear descent? Repealing the Grandchild Clause of Israel’s Law of Return will have very limited value for Israeli right-wingers several decades from now because the pool of eligible ex-USSR immigrants to Israel will be massively less severely decades from now than it currently is. Thus, the main purpose of a repeal of the Grandchild Clause several decades from now would be to severely piss off Western Jews. But Israel is going to have many more non-halakhically-Jewish citizens by then, which might raise the question as to whether a new Sanhedrin can actually do anything to improve their status.
Would you say the very same thing about the prohibition on a kohen marring a convert or divorcee?