When In Doubt, Claim They Ain't Jewish

Great, I'm becoming an Arik booster. Well, not really, but:

Over at Hasidic Rebbele, I find this comment on Ariel Sharon:

I have also read that Arik Sharon's mother is not a Jew; therefore, he is not a Jew either. To me that is amazing. How can the Jews trust him?

That's the dangerous thing about blogging, you can always follow a link to someone who will cause your head to spin around.

Hmmm. Ariel Sharon, was, according to online bios, born in 1928 to Shmuel and Dvora/Vera Scheinerman in Kfar Malal. Shmuel and Vera had come from Russia a few years before. I suppose it's barely possible that Vera was not Jewish, married Shmuel Sheinerman, took a Hebrew name to fool posterity, and went off to struggle raising goats and tobacco in a swamp in British Palestine. The Balabusta has met a lot of other people with interesting family backgrounds. Her own father, a practicing Catholic, once took a Hebrew name, although that was just for a Hebrew class, but so far he has stayed out of swamps as much as possible.

However, since Googling this rumor a couple of ways hasn't produced anything except a page by a classic anti-Semitic nutjob who's fallen prey to the "Ashkenazim are Khazars and therefore not the people in the Bible" thing, I tend to suspect that Dvora Sheinerman was Jewish. I also tend to wonder where the Rebbele 'read' this little tidbit.

Next item: If true, would this be relevent? Ariel Sharon has given his entire life to the state of Israel, since joining the Haganah as a teenager. You can like him or not, applaud or despise what he has done with that life, but it's a simple fact. Israel is what the man DOES. And I used to hear much praise of him, at least from the right wing of the seder table, for this service and devotion. Suppose Sharon wasn't halachically Jewish? Suddenly this explains all his failings? Yick.

It annoys me as a Jew that we can't disagree without trying to figure out ways to force each other out of the Big Jewish Tent. And it really ticks me off, as a Jew with mixed family, that the worst thing Hasidic Rebbele can think of to say about a politician he hates is that his mama wasn't Jewish.

Let's get back to Vera Scheinerman. Per Sarah Honig of the JPost (from 2001, back when right wingers liked Arik):

He was an agronomist and she once a medical student. They made Ariel and his older sister Dita do their homework and take violin lessons (which Arik quickly quit). Their house was full of books but extremely poor. Dvora worked barefoot in the fields, citrus grove, tobacco patch, cow barn and goat shed. Instead of buying herself shoes, she saved for the children's education. Unlike most their neighbors, the Scheinermans insisted their kids attend high school.

Sounds like a nice lady and a good mother. Israel was built on the blood, sweat and tears of people like her. Could we leave her out of our theorizing about why her son turned out such an SOB?