Last week I joined the “is Michael Richards Jewish?” debate squarely on the “no” side. A few folks on my comment board disagreed, arguing that (A) his publicist said he was and (B) some Jewish Web sites list him as a Jewish entertainer.
It turns out I was right, at least insofar as Richards wasn’t raised Jewish, neither of his parents are Jewish and he never converted to Judaism. By the ethnic and religious definitions he’s no Jew.
However, his publicist told the AP:
“Technically, not having been born by blood as Jewish and not formally going into a conversion, it was purely his interpretation of having adopted Judaism as his religion…He told me, ‘I’m Jewish,’ when I asked him.”He said there were two mentors who raised him and who had a big influence on his life, and they were Jewish. He said, ‘I agree with the concepts and the religious beliefs of Judaism and I’ve adopted Judaism as my religion…He really thinks of himself as Jewish.”
When it comes to one’s own religion, does wishing it make it so? The two sources in the article don’t think so, and I’d argue that to join someone else’s faith you need the establishment’s consent via conversion. You can have Jewish beliefs without converting though, so I admit I wasn’t unambiguously right.
Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.
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