Ethics Redux

I must say I was a little surprised at some of the comments on yesterday’s post. Not that I disagreed with them, mind you (I didn’t)… but because everyone seems to have glossed over the central ethical issue that had been troubling me.

The word ‘Birthright’ is the root of my ethical dilemma. If this ‘Birthright’ trip is, in fact, an inherent right of every person who is born Jewish (as the name of the program implies) … then it seems somewhat unethical to place conditions upon any Jew’s participation. Unlike, say, the terms of a legal will, or some other form of inheritance which is given or withheld at the whim of the benefactor, a birthright is, by definition, a right that one is due exclusively because of their birth.

Of course the Bible contains plenty of precedents for revoking, selling, or otherwise diverting a birthright… but in almost every case, a terrible price in enmity or regret is paid. I also would hesitate to place myself on the level of the biblical Patriarchs and Matriarchs who had the wisdom to toy with their children's birthrights.

Those of us who live in democratic countries consider things like voting and civil liberties to be a portion of our own ‘birthright’. Do we exclude anarchists and people who actively oppose the policies of our governments from the free exercise of their birthright, or the protection which that birthright is supposed to afford? Even though these poeple seek to destroy the system that protects them... the answer is obviously 'no'.

Perhaps the name of the program is the root of its problem. It is a lofty ideal… this assumption that simply being Jewish is a basis for a potential lifelong bond with Israel. But in reality the people who put together the birthright program didn’t consider the possibility that a small minority of the people eligible for the program would be truly unworthy of it.

I suggest that they would have been better served naming it ‘Yerushah’ - a Hebrew word much more closely associated with inheritance than birthright. That way, like a parent who finds cause to disown a wayward child, there is a remedy that does not fly in the face of the original premise.

And of course, if that child should ever discover the error if his/her ways (as I truly hope people like Max and Jessica do), one can always write them back into the will.

On a completely unrelated note: I am heart-sick at the latest news over at the normally witty Chez Miscarriage. I can't even talk about it. Suffice it to say that if I had a uterus... I would offer to carry her baby.