What is the "seed of Israel"?
Zera Israel (meaning "seed [of] Israel") is pronounced [zeˈra jisraˈʔel], is a legal category in Jewish law, which indicates a person who is a descendant of a Jew who for one reason or another is not considered a Jew according to halachic rulings.[1][2][3]
According to the Jewish law as found in the tractate "Kiddoshin" in the Mishna, chapter 3, as a language:
"Anyone who does not have her, neither on him nor on others, has a child like her. And which one is it? Born a slave and a foreigner"
That is, if a child is born to a Jewish man and a Gentile (non-Jewish) woman, the child will be like the mother - that is, the child is not considered Jewish.
As stated in Halacha, a Jew is the child of a Jewish mother. Furthermore, Jewish religious law states that a child born to a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother is considered non-Jewish (Gentile), and is not obligated to follow Jewish religious laws.
Both descendants of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother and also descendants of both non-Jewish parents hold the religious status of non-Jews according to Halacha. However, there is an ongoing debate in the Jewish spectrum regarding the gross denunciation of offspring whose father is Jewish and whose mother is not Jewish.
The debate revolves around the socio-cultural aspects of their lives, and raises the question of how they should be treated by Judaism, in regards to their conversion to Judaism and its importance to the Jewish people.
In the book of Ezra 19:2 it is said:
Because they took their daughters to them and to their sons and mixed the seed of holiness with the peoples of the lands.
In our world today we find many examples of these things that are questioned even in Israel in the Diaspora. In Israel there are tens of thousands of Israeli Russians with Jewish ancestors who want to undergo a proper conversion. In the Diaspora there are millions of Maranos (also known as "Bani Anosim") scattered across the globe. Bnei anosim in Hebrew literally means "sons of the forced" (Bnei Maranos), a term indicating the descendants of the Jews who, during the Inquisition, were forced to convert to Christianity under the pain of a brutal death.
In the Iberian Peninsula, Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism were called New Christians, Anosim or Marnos (in a pejorative way), which means pig in Spanish. We also cite the term crypto-Jews, who practiced Judaism secretly, and publicly declared a different faith, while externalizing Catholicism.
It is known that in Brazil about 30% of the Brazilians have some Jewish origin. What remains of the Jewish influence in Brazil is evidenced in the customs, traditions and vocabulary of Maranos, which have been handed down from generation to generation for more than 500 years. In northeastern Brazil, many of the Jewish traditions remain alive and are practiced even without knowing the reason or being distorted, as a type of family law.
Surprisingly in Israel, the "Law of Return" states that anyone who has a Jewish background or origin (that is, biological), and not necessarily anyone who is considered (according to Halacha) to be Jewish, is entitled to go through this process. and be part of the House of Israel.
