[BubbaBasher]

My fiance keeps telling me that the Jewish culture is and always has been a matriarchal structure. Can you either validate or discredit this thought?

[exodus]

To: Ippolita
My fiance keeps telling me that the Jewish culture is and always has been a matriarchal structure. Can you either validate or discredit this thought?
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By my understanding, if a Jewish man marries a gentile woman, the children are considered gentile, but if a Jewish woman marries a gentile man, the children are accepted as Jewish.

That would be a matriarchal structure, though I've never actually asked a Jewish person if what I've said above is true.

Also, I understand that people can be Jewish just by deciding that the God of Abraham is their God (just as Christians and Moslems do), so children of Jewish men could be Jewish if they want to, but Jewish women's children would be Jewish by Jewish law, without choice in the matter.

[Ippolita]

Jewish culture is and always has been a matriarchal structure>BR> Jewish culture is matrilinear not matriarchal. That is, being jewish is traced by female line: if your mother is Jewish, you are jewish; if your mother is not, you are not.

This is shown quite clearly in the Bible. Ishmael could not be part of the Jewish story because his mother was not Jewish, while Isaac was Jewish because Sarai was. If the line had been traced throught the male, in this case Abraham, then Ishmael would have been as Jewish as Isaac.