ABSTRACT
A prominent United States government official recently explained to a visiting American Jewish Committee (AJC) delegation that the only reason he was not a practicing Jew today was the refusal of his Conservative rabbi to confer the bar mitzvah rite of passage upon him inasmuch as his father had been Jewish but his mother was Gentile. At virtually the same point in time, Rabbi Yitz Greenberg, a prominent modern Orthodox rabbi well known for advocating religious pluralism, also addressing an AJC forum, condemned as “a first-class disaster” the Reform movement's decision to accept patrilineal descent as a criterion for defining who is a Jew.
