Jewish
Frontier

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Not among the Danish Gentiles, those friendly, self-deprecatory people who every few years open their country to refugees fleeing one or another catastrophe. But among the Danish Jews, who have caught a dose of the epidemic sweeping through Jewish communities everywhere: that uncontrollable urge to reject other Jews because they're not "Jewish enough." In larger communities like Israel or the U.S., the number of Jews is large enough so that countermeasures can be, and are being taken. The Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox attempts to define who is a Jew are slowly but surely being beaten back in the former, while in the latter, the strength of Conservative and Reform Judaism provides the necessary counterweight to the exclusionary designs of much of the Orthodox community.

The small Danish Jewish population (8,000 or fewer), however, grows daily smaller, while its official representatives are busy discouraging membership and delegitimizing other Jews.

Who are Denmark's Jews, and from where have they come? Sephardic and German Jewish immigration began as early as three hundred years ago. a wave of Russian Jewish immigration, starting with the Czarist pogroms of 1881, continued until World War I. It was augmented by Polish and German Jewish immigration. Another wave consisted of refugees from Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1939. All of these groups made up the 7,000 Jews rescued by the Danes, who in 1943 spirited them over to Sweden under the noses of the German occupiers.

The latest group consists of the approximately 2,500 Polish Jews who fled the anti-Semitic persecutions of the Gomulka regime in 1968-1972.

Copenhagen, where most Danish Jews live, boasts an Orthodox synagogue, a small ultra-Orthodox communicy: Machsike Hadass, and a Lubavitch group. The last plays the usual role of seeking baalei tshuva, and is not particularly Danish. (Its newest "shlikhim," lately interviewed in the Jewish monthly Jodisk Orientering, are from the U.S.)

It is in the Orthodox synagogue and the Mosaisk Troessamfund (Mosaic Faith Society) that the communal power resides. And it rests almost entirely in the hands of the 'old' Danish Jews: those whose families came between the seventeenth century and the Second World War. Well into the 1960's, that community, like most, maintained a fairly liberal stance on acceptance of other Jews, mindful of the awful catastrophe which had destroyed a third of Jewry. But that community, like others, has responded to the relative security of the modern era with a toughening of putative standards for what constitutes a Jew. The arguments are couched in Halakhic terms. The effect (some would argue, the primary motivation) is to exclude 'undesirables,' particularly the Polish Jewish immigrants, as well as prospective converts to Judaism:

— Albert, a doctor, Polish Jew, born 1941, most of his family perished in the ghettos, he himself hidden by Polish Gentiles. Raised in a town like most Polish towns, virtually empty of Jews. Came to Denmark in 1969. Married a non-Jew from his home town, later divorced. One daughter aged 20. She is educated in Judaism, considers herself a Jew. But, according to the latest set of rules adopted by her peers in the Jewish Youth Organization, she is ineligible to join, since her mother is not a Jew. Albert raised this issue with the Mosaisk Troessamfund when they called to solicit his membership and his money. He got the bureaucratic answer, "The Jewish Youth Organization is an independent entity." (Had the Jewish Youth Organization set the rules the opposite, for example, that Gentile girl or boy friends of Jewish members could themselves become members, the parents in the Mosaisk Troessamfun would most assuredly have annulled that vote, and cut off funding, "independence" notwithstanding.) Albert says, "My family was murdered in the ghetto because they were Jews, and the 'old' Danish Jews, who sat out the war in safety in Sweden, dare to tell me that my daughter isn't a Jew? After what the Jewish people has suffered and lost in our lifetime, shouldn't the entrance requirements be made easier, such as they (still) are in Israel, rather than harder? Do these Danish Jews think they're more Jewish than the Jewish State?" He has refused to join or support the Mosaisk Troessamfund.

— Alina, a physicist, completely Jewish on both sides of her family, born just after the war in Uzbekistan, to which her parents had fled from Poland. Family returned to Poland after the war, moved to Denmark in 1969. A few years ago, Alina sought to become a member of the Mosaisk Troessamfund. She was told that she would have to bring written proof that her parents were Jews. Such proof obviously does not exist: that request is no different from the Swiss insurance companies' demands for death certificates from the heirs of concentration camp victims. Alina says, "How can I make such a request of my parents? After what they suffered as Jews, shall they now be required to present evidence of their Jewishness to the Mosaisk Troessamfund?" Her arguments to official representatives of the Danish Jewish community fell on deaf ears. She changed her mind about joining.

— Christine, daughter of one of my Danish university colleagues, non-Jew, became interested in Judaism. Went to Israel as a kibbutz volunteer, met and fell in love with a kibbutznik. This further stoked her interest in Judaism. She returned to Denmark and enrolled in the University of Copenhagen, majoring in Jewish Studies. She then went to the Danish Jewish community and asked how she could prepare for conversion and subsequent marriage. She was told that she would have to study with them (independent of her university studies), "for three or four years" and then they "would see" if she would be "permitted to continue." Result: she and her fiance married in a Danish civil ceremony, and are now back on the kibbutz. within the next year or so, they will move to Denmark. whether Christine will continue her university Jewish studies is not yet clear. What is clear is that Jewry now boasts one more intermarried family which could have been, and wanted to be, a Jewish family.

The phenomenon is not limited to Denmark. Julian Ilicki, one of the 2500 Polish Jews who immigrated to Sweden in 1968-72, published a sociological study of his community in 1988.¹ Most of these immigrants and their families live in one of three cities: Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmo. In the first two, with liberal Jewish communal policies, and synagogues resembling Conservative/Reform American ones, Jewish identity among Polish Jews and their children has grown. In Malmo, on the other hand, which actually received the largest proportion of Jewishly identified and traditionally religious immigrants, Jewish identity has sharply declined, due to the Orthodox synagogue's policies, which mirror those of its counterpart in Copenhagen.

In each of the three cases described above, and the many more like them, a way could and should have been found to encourage and welcome new members. Albert's daughter, and other children like her, could be brought to Judaism through the Jewish Youth Organization, and converted pro forma. (Actually, this case has convinced me to change my own position on patrilineal descent, which I had dismissed as a divisive conceit of Reform Judaism. I now believe it is not only in keeping with modern genetic science, but a just and appropriate solution to the catastrophe of the Holocust. But let us compromise with pro forma conversions for Jewishly identified children of Jewish fathers.) Christine should have been given a reasonable time frame: one or two years, with a clear syllabus leading to conversion. And Alina should never have been subjected to such an obscene demand.

It is the obligation of every established Jewish community to attract, not repel, other Jews and prospective converts. The Polish Jews, families decimated, survivors subected to Polish and Communist anti-Semitism, are, through no fault of their own, ignorant of much of Judaism. The right thing to do would have been to provide them with Jewish education, and help them to acculturate to Danish Judaism Instead, they were met with the increasingly common Orthodox response: "My way or no way. We cannot bend Jewish law."

These are the same Orthodox 'strict constructionists' who over the centuries have found a way to bend (they would say 'interpret') Jewish law to employ shabbes-goyem, to sell their khametsdike dishes to a Gentile for one mark/ruble/krone/dollar before Pesakh and to buy them back afterward, to ride in automatic elevators on Shabbat, all for personal convenience. But when it comes to welcoming and encourage other Jews or prospective converts, then suddenly their only answer is No. It is high time to question both the validity of, and motivation for, such selective interpretations of Halakha.

Albert thinks there may be a faint ray of hope. Some more progressive Jews have lately managed to reach positions of responsibility in the Mosaisk Troessamfund. Some 'old' Danish Jews are sufficiently fearful of the community's disappearance that they are become a little more open minded. But as long as their rabbi and his counterparts elsewhere insist on taking their marching orders from the most extreme Orthodox factions in america and Israel, they will be, despite all their sermons decrying assimilation and intermarriage, particularly culpable in the disappearance of their own communities and the decrease in the number of Jews in the world.

J.V. Mallow is professor of physics at Loyola University, Chicago.

1. Julian Ilicki, The Changeable Identity: On Changing Identity Among the Younger Generation of Polish Jews Immigrating to Sweden in 1968-1972, Sallskapet for Judaistisk Forskning, Abo, Sweden, 1988.