Israel's never-ending, and very human, 'Who Is a Jew?' saga

(JTA) — Jared Armstong has an emotional story to tell, and he told it in an oped I edited last week for our opinion section (Heritage ran it last week as an article). Armstrong made headlines recently when the Israeli government refused his application for citizenship. Armstrong, a recent college graduate from Philadelphia, says he grew up Jewish, as did his mother. His grandmother, he said, embraced Judaism as an adult.

For all those reasons he was shocked when Israel’s Foreign Ministry rejected his initial application for aliyah, but he agreed to undergo a conversion with his rabbi, Rabbi Mi...