Rigid Rules, Olivia Newton-John, and Lightening Up

Every time an iconic star passes away, we’re reminded of the impact that person’s art had on our lives. We hop on a time machine and zip through personal memories, blissfully listening to the icon’s songs or watching movies, smiles overcoming our faces. Sadly, the world has lost Olivia Newton-John, and here we go again.

While most of us did not know her on a personal level, we were well-acquainted with her warm and caring public persona, and her unique voice, one you could identify immediately. We are certainly mourning her loss.

Now, those who are familiar with my story are aware that I happen to be half Jewish. (I’m not going to get into the argument here of what that means, and if you don’t like that term, let’s say I’m a “patrilineal Jew” instead. Same thing.) On social media, I’m fairly active in the Jewish community, and so the passing of Olivia Newton-John was recognized in a somewhat surprising manner in this crowd.

First of all, there were several posts about her Jewish heritage. Therefore, each was meant to spark more sympathy because she either:

a.) was a Jew.

b.) was a half-Jew.

c.) was a quarter-Jew.

d.) was a Halachic Jew.

The posts varied, and although most comments were positive, along the lines of, “I had no idea she was Jewish!” etc., others were of the typical argumentative line, to which I have grown accustomed as a half-Jew:

“She wasn’t a Jew!”

“She WAS NOT a Halachic Jew!”

“She worshipped Jesus!”

Halachic, by the way, means “according to rabbinic (or Jewish) law.”

People have yelled at me my entire life about how I’m “NOT A JEW!” How dare I even think of such a possibility, even though my father was Jewish? I mean, what in the world am I thinking?

Well, I had to get to the bottom of this Olivia Newton-John issue because frankly, I had never heard of her Jewish roots in the first place. I just knew I loved her voice!

As it turns out, it is a bit confusing. From what I can ascertain, it seems her father was not Jewish, and no one is claiming he was. It was her mother’s heritage in question. So here’s the deal.

Her mother was three-quarters Jewish, which would ethnically make Olivia nearly half if she had ever done an ancestry DNA test. And who knows? Perhaps she did? I have no idea. However, despite her mother’s ancestry, these three-quarters were the wrong three-quarters.

Wrong?

Yes, believe it or not, according to Jewish law which is all very technical. Olivia’s mother’s father was Jewish. That in and of itself didn’t make her Jewish, just like me (except for in a couple of denominations.)

So let’s take a look at her mother’s mother, Olivia’s grandmother. She was Lutheran. And yet, her father was Jewish. This is why Olivia’s mother was three-quarters, but with her mother’s mother being Lutheran, the Judaism was not passed down to her, according to religious law, which states that the religion is matrilineal and passes down through the women only.

Never mind the fact that the Jewish ancestors in her family were important Jews of historical record. Max Born, her grandfather, won the Nobel Prize for Physics for his work in quantum mechanics. He was friends with Albert Einstein and had to flee the Nazi regime in Germany. Her great-grandfather was the German Jewish jurist Victor Ehrenberg.

But… She wasn’t Jewish enough for some people. You know, the rules.

Olivia’s mother was born in Germany in 1914 and fled the Nazi regime with her Jewish family in 1933. Had she stayed, we can imagine the outcome. As a “three-quarter Jew” that was certainly Jewish enough for the Nazi camps. The technicality that her mother’s mother was Lutheran would not have helped her situation. She was a Jew. Period.

And as Olivia pointed out, her mother was always proud of that heritage.

Rules can be important, don’t get me wrong. We need laws to live by, basic rules to follow in any given situation, but life is never black and white. All rules must be accompanied with a healthy dose of common sense, and we’ve got to be willing to bend a bit when necessary. At times, it is appropriate to lay down the law, but there are always those grey areas or obvious scenarios when clearly we just need to lighten up.

Is life really all about analyzing rules? If you really think that, you’re missing out.

Do me a favor. Go for a walk. Breathe. Look at the sky. Sit down and watch the birds as you think for a bit. Relax.

Some rules are serious, but others are trivial. It’s up to us to be discerning.

See this article on Medium.

D.M. Miller is the author of the interfaith “Heart” series as well as the romantic suspense, Mexican Summer, the memoir, Half-Jew: Searching for Identity, and the poetry collections, Dandelion Fuzz, Banished Thoughts, and Neshama. The product of an interfaith marriage herself, Miller’s work explores the difficult themes of religion, politics, ethnicity, culture, family, ancestry and love. See her books on Amazon.