Rabbinical Jewry is defined maternally and by conversion, never racially.

Evidence

In its political form, Zionism is quite clearly a nationalist movement of the type which was common in parts of Europe in the nineteenth century and which spread to much of Asia and Africa in the twentieth century. It is no more racial and no more discriminatory than other movements of this type—indeed less than most, since it is based on an entity defined primarily in religious rather than ethnic terms. The definition of a Jew according to rabbinical law is one who is born of a Jewish mother irrespective of the religious or racial origin of the father, or one who is duly converted to Judaism. This is not a racial definition; for the racist, fathers are at least as relevant as mothers, and identity cannot be changed at will. Zionism has always accepted this definition of the Jew, and the laws of the modern state of Israel recognize a convert to Judaism as a Jew and a convert from Judaism as a non-Jew. Zionism is certainly a form of nationalism, and the state of Israel may therefore practice some forms of discrimination, but these are not racial, insofar as this word retains any precise meaning at the present time. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1345

Categorization

• DEFINE: A crisp account of the rabbinical definition of Jewishness (matrilineal descent plus conversion) and the argument that this is intrinsically non-racial.
• XREF: Connects to debates over who counts as Jewish in Israeli law and to Lerner’s later chapters on the Resolution itself.