Rabbi ElizaBeth Beyer is the founding rabbi of Temple Beth Or, a new Jewish Spiritual Community in Reno, Nevada dedicated to learning and making everyone feel welcome.  She is a registered nurse who mostly worked in intensive care and attorney who practiced health care law in private practice.  Currently she works as an arbitrator, mediator and pro tem judge.

She taught at the University of Nevada, Reno and was the past chair for Health Care Ethics in the Nevada Center of Ethics & Health Policy.  In 2006, Rabbi Beyer was ordained by the Academy for Jewish Religion in LA, CA. She received a Master’s Degree in Jewish Studies from Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies  in Chicago and a Master’s Degree in Psychiatric Nursing from University of Maryland.  Her law degree is from Nevada School of Law.  She is married to Dr. Tom Beyer, DC, a chiropractor.         

Rabbi ElizaBeth Beyer, R.N., M.S.N., M.S.J.S., M.R.S., J.D.     

                                     Click Here for Curriculum Vitae
                          Click HERE for Rabbinic Rates

If you have a question, please email the rabbi at redsunrize@yahoo.com.  She will respond to you and may post your question here.

QUESTION: Rabbi, I'm not really comfortable coming to a synagogue because I don't know anyone there. 

This is an interesting question.  Many people who have not been to a synagogue recently do feel a bit uneasy.  That's why we really try to go out of our way to make new people feel welcome.  To learn what we do, you can watch our YouTubes to see a regular Shabbat service, or you could see us at Whole Foods on most Saturday mornings.  Sign up for our newsletter or see our past newsletters under the Press Room tab on this website and you'll find out more about us.  Ultimately, the only way to get acquainted with the community is to show up.  Come join us when you're able and bring a friend.

QUESTION:  Rabbi, Can you explain why in Jewish tradition someone is considered Jewish because of their mother, not their father?

Note:  The following response answers this question from an academic and halachic standpoint.  Read the bottom for TBOR's position on this issue.   

Matrilineal descent - Apparently scholars think that it was NOT a Biblical principle re: Matrilineal descent, however, the orthodox, naturally derive it from Torah.

TORAH ALLUSIONS TO MATRILINEAL DESCENT
"In Deuteronomy 7:1-5, in expressing the prohibition against intermarriage, G-d says "he [i.e., the non-Jewish male spouse] will cause your child to turn away from Me and they will worship the gods of others." No such concern is expressed about the child of a non-Jewish female spouse. From this, we infer that the child of a non-Jewish male spouse is Jewish (and can therefore be turned away from Judaism), but the child of a non-Jewish female spouse is not Jewish (and therefore turning away is not an issue).

Leviticus 24:10 speaks of the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man as being "among the community of Israel" (i.e., a Jew).

On the other hand, in Ezra 10:2-3, the Jews returning to Israel vowed to put aside their non-Jewish wives and the children born to those wives. They could not have put aside those children if those children were Jews."
http://www.jewfaq.org/whoisjew.htm

ON MATRILINEAL DESCENT FROM THE ACADEMIC PERSPECTIVE
"Prof. Shaye D. Cohen is the Literature Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University...found that matrilineal descent evolved from an original policy of patrilineal descent. In the Torah, a person's status as a Jew seems to come from his father. Joseph was married to a non-Jewish woman, and his children were considered Jewish. The same was the case for Moses and King Solomon. The change to a policy of matrilineal descent came in late antiquity.

Prof. Cohen has two theories about how this came to be. One is that the Tannaim, the rabbis who codified the concept of matrilineal descent, were influenced by the Roman legal system of the time. According to two sources from the end of the second century CE and the beginning of the third century CE, in a marriage between two Romans, a child would receive the status of his father. In an intermarriage between a Roman and a non-Roman, a child received the citizenship status of its mother.

Cohen's other theory is that the Tannaim developed matrilineal descent from an already existing conclusion about mixed breeding in the animal kingdom. The Torah prohibits the breeding of animals of different species, but there is an opinion in the Mishnah (Kilayim 8:4) that suggests that a mule whose mother was a horse and whose father was a donkey should be allowed to mate with other horses. This implies that "horse-hood" is passed down through the mother, regardless of the father's species. This concept may have been extrapolated by the rabbis to operate beyond the animal kingdom. Cohen presents both theories, but admits that neither have been conclusively proven."                                                                        http://wwwww.myjewishlearning.com/ask_the_expert/at/AsktheExpert--Matrilineal_descent.shtml

"Matrilineal descent, the passing down of a child's Jewish identity via the mother, is not a biblical principle. In biblical times, many Jewish men married non-Jews, and their children's status was determined by the father's religion.

According to Professor Shaye Cohen of Brown University: "Numerous Israelites heroes and kings married foreign women: for example, Judah married a Canaanite, Joseph an Egyptian, Moses a Midianite and an Ethiopian, David a Philistine, and Solomon women of every description. By her marriage with an Israelite man a foreign women joined the clan, people, and religion of her husband. It never occurred to anyone in pre-exilic times to argue that such marriages were null and void, that foreign women must "convert" to Judaism, or that the off-spring of the marriage were not Israelite if the women did not convert."

Talmudic Times

"Sometime during the Roman occupation and the Second Temple period, a law of matrilineal descent, which defined a Jew as someone with a Jewish mother, was adopted. By the 2nd century CE, it was clearly practiced.

The Talmud (Kiddushin 68b), which was compiled in the 4th and 5th centuries, explains that the law of matrilineal descent derived from the Torah. The Torah passage (Deut. 7:3-4) reads: "Thy daughter thou shalt not give to his son, nor shalt thou take his daughter to thy son. For they will turn away thy son from following me, that they may serve other gods."

Some scholars believe that this new law of matrilineal descent was enacted in response to intermarriage. Others say that the frequent cases of Jewish women being raped by non-Jews led to the law; how could a raped Jewish woman's child be considered non-Jewish by the Jewish community in which he or she would be raised? Some believe that the matrilineal principle was borrowed from Roman.
http://judaism.about.com/od/whoisajew/a/whoisjewdescent.htm     

TEMPLE BETH OR

Those who are of patrilineal descent are welcome to join our congregation.  Please contact the rabbi for further details.