IT WAS a surprise to be invited by neighbours to celebrate the Jewish Passover feast with them by sharing the seder or ritual meal. There was a time when such an invitation would have a Catholic anxiously asking a priest if it was OK for a Christian to join in such a sacred Jewish ritual.
Now one felt honoured to be so invited and curious about how the meal, which commemorates the liberation of the Jews from captivity in Egypt, would be conducted.
There was little formality at ours. There were no skull caps and the host, in shirtsleeves, had to struggle with the Hebrew prayers. But he had thoughtfully provided translations and a commentary in English so that it was easy to follow every step and understand the symbolism of the various objects on the beautifully laid out table.
These included a roasted bone, green vegetable, chopped nuts, apples, wine and spices, a roasted egg, bitter herbs, and, of course, the unleavened bread recalling the cakes the ancestors had to bake in haste as they prepared for their flight from slavery.
Three generations of this family were present, from grandmother to 15 month old granddaughter, who bawled a lot as we worked our way through the readings and the eating and drinking. The traditional posture of "reclining" was hard to reproduce on modern furniture so we imagined we were stretched out around the feast.
Our host had arranged a shortened version of the meal, which the elders present recalled as going on for hours and being repeated on a second evening. No doubt our informal version, with much laughing and joking, would not have met the approval of Orthodox Jews, who in the US account for only 7 per cent, while the more liberal Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist Jews are the overwhelming majority.
Yet the Orthodox claim sole authority in Jewish religious affairs such as deciding who is really a Jew and ruling on conversions of non Jews. In Israel, this is a vital factor in the operation of the law of Return for those seeking citizenship.
The Israeli secular courts have been challenging this monopoly, much to the satisfaction of the non Orthodox Jews in the US, to whom the thought of such rigorous control is intolerable. As the well known commentator William Safire, who is himself a Jew, put it: "Who are you fundamentalists to challenge the legitimacy of our modern religious practice? We celebrate diversity in our democracy and don't have to keep kosher to keep the faith. (And we send you guys a bundle too.)"
But Safire imagines the Orthodox responding as follows to this US heresy: "Your relaxed brand of Judaism has led to intermarriage and assimilation. As a result, in the 50 years that the US population has doubled, the number of US Jews has stayed the same or dwindled, with only the Orthodox segment growing. That proves our way is the only way to preserve the faith. (And we face terror daily, not you.)"
US Jews have become alarmed and even angry at the law now going through the Knesset which would establish Orthodox rabbis as the sole authority to perform conversions in Israel and delegitimise Reform and Conservative Judaism. The law seems to be a quid pro quo for the political support given the Israeli Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu, by the ultra right parties representing Orthodox Jews.
In the US, a small group of Orthodox rabbis has followed suit now saying that any other kind of Judaism "is not Judaism at all, but another religion".
At our Passover meal, there was indignation at this highhanded action by a group representing less than 10 per cent of the Jewish branches in the US. But there is unease also.
A distinguished Jewish lawyer, Alan Dershowitz he helped defend O.J. Simpson - has just written a book, Tize Vanishing American Jew. He has passed from an Orthodox upbringing to a liberal version of Judaism.
But based on inter marriage rates and low birth rates he predicts that "American Jewry - indeed diaspora Jewry - may virtually vanish by the third quarter of the 21st century". Dershowitz's book is an attempt to preserve Jewishness in a secular culture but without bowing to the Orthodox demands. Our Passover meal seemed a good way.
But as this article was being written, news came in of a suspected poison attack on the headquarters in Washington of the worldwide Jewish social services agency, B'nai B'rith. The package fortunately contained only foul smelling gelatine and not deadly anthrax bacteria, but according to police, the letter with it included the words "the only good Jew is an Orthodox Jew".
It was the work of some fanatic obviously, but a worrying indication of how passions are now being raised by the "Who is a Jew?" controversy.