The "qualifications" no doubt qualify as some kind of definition of what it is to be a Jew. For instance, a Jewish father is irrelevant since if a Jewish man father's a child through a Gentile that child is Gentile. He's incapable of passing on his Jewish identity through the male organ of procreation. Perhaps that's why it's fair to say the very sign of Jewish identity, ritual circumcision, is spiritual emasculation. Jewish law recognizes this by establishing the fact that Jewish identity cannot come through the male organ. . . And it cuts deeper than that since a Jewish woman can father a Jewish child even if the father isn't Jewish. -----It's the Jewish womb, separate from the male organ (which can be Jewish or Gentile since it doesn't matter if ritually it ain't going to contaminate a Jewish womb anyhow: brit milah).
Genesis 17:4-5 says: "As for Me, this is My covenant with you: You shall be a father of a multitude of nations; you are no longer to be called Avram, but your name is to be Avraham, for I have appointed you as father of the multitude of nations." To this verse, Rabbi Hirsch replies:
What is the meaning of this latter phrase? To maintain that it refers to Avraham's physical descendants is difficult, for they are mentioned only in verse 6. The name "אברהם" also shows that, here, the phrase is not to be taken in the physical sense. Were אב meant to be taken literally, in the physical sense, the form of the name would be "אבהם" and the ר would be meaningless and disruptive.
Rabbi Hirsch is clear that the sons of the covenant aren't the physical descendants of Abraham. And to ensure that the world knows this, Abram sacrifices the organ associated with physical descendants as the signature act of the covenant. Jewish law recognizes Abraham's circumcision by saying that a Jewish male can't pass on Jewish identity. It's not something physical that comes through normal human procreation. It's something metaphysical. The actual Jew is a
Metaphysical Jew. He can come from Abraham's physical lineage or non-Abrahamic lineage. Abraham's physical seed adds nothing to what it is to be a Jew. At best, being born of Abraham's physical lineage, through Sarah, makes a person a
Token Jew, a Jew who is Jewish through ritual and certain ritual practices (as well as being Abraham's phallic-offspring) but not a Jew in the most clear and obvious sense of what the practices and ritual represent, i.e., what the qualifications qualify: a birth not associated in any way with phallic-sex.
Today, Abraham's physical offspring have for the most part come to believe that the physical rituals and practices are the spirit of what it is to be a Jew. So it serves them well to drain those rituals and practices of any meaning outside the mere physical practice of the ritual (which is what they think makes them Jewish). The ritual has become the reality, since the reality has been drained of its blood leaving only dead rituals and practices.
John