The Jew -- By: Bruce L. Button

Journal: Grace Journal
Volume: GJ 04:3 (Fall 1963)
Article: The Jew
Author: Bruce L. Button


The Jew

Bruce L. Button

Los Angeles, California

[This article was one of the Bauman Memorial Lectures for 1963, delivered at Grace Theological Seminary, February 5–8. Mr. Button is Superintendent of the Brethren Messianic Testimony, Los Angeles, California.]

Who is a Jew? While this question may seem superfluous at first consideration, it has, nevertheless, posed a question to both Jew and Gentile down through the ages. Once again this question has come into prominence. This time it has been raised in the young nation of Israel as the outgrowth of a request by Oswald Rufeisen, a Polish Jew converted to Catholicism, and now a Carmelite Monk living in Israel. Rufeisen, now Father Daniel, was converted to Catholicism in Poland in 1942. Since 1959 he has been living at the Carmelite Monastery in Haifa. Approximately four years ago he applied for citizenship under Israel’s Law of The Return, which, briefly stated, permits any “Jew” to become a citizen of Israel simply upon return to the land, taking up residence in that land, and making application to the Ministry of Interior for citizenship, at the same time offering valid proof of being a “Jew.”

Father Daniel is the born son of a Jewish mother. According to Halacha (the legal formulae on which the foundation of Jewish religious life is based), and also according to every other Rabbinical interpretation, a person so born is a Jew, even if he apostatizes to Christianity, Catholicism, or any other religion, or believes in no religion at all. In other words, once a Jew by birth through a Jewish mother, always a Jew. So here is a Polish Jew named Oswald Rufeisen, a man who aided other Jews to evade and escape the clutches of the Gestapo during the horrid years of Nazi domination, asking for citizenship in Israel under the Law of the Return as any Jew would do. True, he has converted to Catholicism; true, he is a Carmelite Monk; true, he has had to seek Vatican permission to change his Polish nationality for Israeli Jewish citizenship; but according to the highest Jewish religious code, he is a Jew! He is entitled to citizenship on the basis of his Jewishness. He enters Israel, takes up residence in Haifa, and submits his application to the Ministry of Interior.

Now he could, under Israeli law, become a citizen in the same manner as a non-Jew. This would entail his living in Israel for a period of time and then becoming a “Naturalized” citizen. But this would not be returning as a Jew under the Law of the Return. Father Daniel desired above everything else to be admitted to Israeli citizenship as a Jew! The Ministry of the Interior rejected his application on the ground he was not a Jew! They were ready to accept his bid to become an Israeli citizen under ...

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