Grace versus (Matrilineal) Descent

I just read an entry in a good friend's blog (who shall remain nameless) in which her father, a self-professed Christian, tearily told my friend, who is not: "I love you, and I don't want to go to heaven without you."

This caused me to reflect about something that's been on my mind a lot of late. My beliefs, I suspect, are similar to my friend's. I'm more a militant agnostic (politically as well as religiously militant) with atheist tendencies, while my friend and her teuthid spouse are (or so I infer) flat-out atheists. (See note 1.)

But my situation's more complicated than that -- allow me to elaborate.

I was just reflecting that a humanistic outlook (which is another way of describing my views) fits much better into Judaism than into Christianity -- especially given Christianity's emphasis on salvation by grace. My friend's father is (for certain values) a Christian -- because he has accepted fanciful stories written down a hundred years after the events they allegedly describe occurred as the revealed, inerrant word of God. (And yes, I'd describe the Tanakh -- similar but not identical to what my friend's dad'd call the Old Testament -- the same way, but change "hundreds" to "thousands.") My friend, however, is not a Christian. Had my friend been born into a Jewish family, however, her mother would have been Jewish, and she would be too -- whether she wanted to be or not. In that crucial respect, Judaism is a tribe, not a religion. So I am Jewish because my mom is, and regardless (within limits) of what I profess to be. My friend, on the other hand, doesn't accept Jesus as her ShorDurPerSav, um, that is, personal savior -- and that's that.

There are two related issues here that I am eliding. One, what happens in a Jewish family where the father is Jewish, but the mother is not. This is a complicated question; each branch of Judaism (across the spectrum: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist) has different rules, which interact awkwardly. I don't have the time or the energy to address these issues here, but here is a good basic discussion, and here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is more then you probably want to know about Judaism, the word "Jew," "Who is a Jew?", and the Israeli legislation that lets Jews obtain Israeli citizenship as of right, the Law of Return (which article also has a link to the text of the Law of Return, in English, at the website of the Knesset, the Israeli parlament). (Hey! I just edited my first Wikipedia article!)

And two, the religious status of a Jew who has converted to another religion, especially one incompatible with Judaism. Being a Buddhist Jew is, rather than a contradiction, easy, according to this practicing Buddhist (a teacher of Buddhism, even) and observant Jew and this dialogue between a Buddhist Jew and a rabbi. Being a Christian Jew -- while it may have been true in an historical sense in the early part of the first millennium C.E. -- is and was, theologically, a contradiction in terms.

Of course, who am I as a humanistic/Reconstructionist Jew to say who is, and who is not, Jewish?

Note 1. I mis-read the signals. To quote my friend, "You might consider calling dad an evangelical, born-again, fundamentalists nutball. You might also add that I am a Jeffersonian deist with strong Buddhist and humanist leanings. What an oddball." No oddball she!