r/JewsOfConscience • u/AutoModerator • Jul 10 '24

AAJ "Ask A Jew" Wednesday

It's everyone's favorite day of the week, "Ask A (Anti-Zionist) Jew" Wednesday! Ask whatever you want to know, within the sub rules, notably that this is not a debate sub and do not import drama from other subreddits. That aside, have fun! We love to dialogue with our non-Jewish siblings.

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u/FurstRoyalty-Ties Anti-Zionist Ally Jul 11 '24

Are there any particular reasons that matrilineal descendancy was chosen in mainstream sects for defining someone as a Jew compared to patriliniean descendancy?

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u/Saul_al-Rakoun Conservadox & Marxist Jul 11 '24

"Was chosen"? We don't know exactly when the halacha shifted, but it was sometime in the five hundred years between the return of the Babylonian Exiles under Ezra and the destruction of the Second Temple.

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u/FurstRoyalty-Ties Anti-Zionist Ally Jul 11 '24

Thank you for the response. What about the reason(s) for the change itself, is that known ? Or has it been lost to time ?

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u/Saul_al-Rakoun Conservadox & Marxist Jul 11 '24

To my (limited) knowledge, a reason isn't passed down in the mesora. Much of the pre-Mishnaic mesora that was not preserved by the tannaim has been lost to us.

We can reasonably suppose that the shift from patrilineage to matrilineage occurred for reasons similar to the shift from dowries to bride-prices (of which the wedding ring in Judaism is the vestigial remnant), and this would be the result of structural changes to the way agriculture (and hence, all of social reproduction) was organized.