International Holocaust Memorial Day

Today is International Holocaust Memorial Day. I occasionally get comments from various people in the Messianic movement who try to defend their status as Jews by making statements such as, "If Hitler was around, he would send me to the gas chambers just like you."

There is an inherent problem with this argument. Whether a person is Jewish or not is a Jewish legal issue. Non-Jews are not able to make Jewish legal decisions. As an analogy, let's say that France states that a particular person is an American citizen. Does that make the person an American citizen? Of course not. The person is only an American citizen if the American legal system decides so. French opinion is meaningless on this issue. Similarly, non-Jews do not have the legal right to decide who is Jewish under Jewish law.

Jewish legal decisions are made by knowledgeable religious leaders of the Jewish community. Ultimately, whether Hitler would have decided that someone was Jewish or not is irrelevant. Whether Hitler would have killed someone "as a Jew" or not is irrelevant. The only relevant issue is whether Jewish law defines a person as Jewish.