oh, he's Jewish enough

[calimac]

Only the most occasional echo of Olympics news is making it into my cortex, but here's one: upon Artem Dolgopyat, an Israeli male gymnast, becoming only the second Israeli ever to win a gold medal, his mother gave a press interview "to complain that Israeli religious law is keeping her engaged 24-year-old son from tying the knot because only his father's side of the family is Jewish."

Yeah, it's the religious law that says you're only Jewish by inheritance by the maternal line. Otherwise you have to go out of the country to marry, and Dolgopyat has been too busy training. (But hey, he was just in Tokyo. But I guess he was still busy.)

And why is she so much more anxious about her son's marriage than apparently either her son or his fiancee is?

"'I want grandchildren,' she said Sunday in an interview with Israeli radio."

Which leads me to conclude: he may only be Jewish on his father's side, but has he ever got a Jewish mother.

Comments

[nancylebov]

The difficulty was travel during the pandemic. Maybe there's a problem with both him and his fiancee travelling.

[cmcmck]

My Jewish ancestry comes down the maternal line and people have said to me: 'if you want to be Jewish, you're Jewish' which makes me smile no end! :o)