He is here on a Birthright trip. He is 20 years old and had never put on tefillin before. Obviously, I stressed how important it is for him to marry only a Jewish girl.

     I asked him why he had never put on tefillin.

     He answered, "Reform."

    "Be careful! The Reform Movement have changed a lot of things that the Torah says. Not just tefillin, but even worse, they say that anyone who has a Jewish Father, even if their Mother is not Jewish, is Jewish. This is just not true.

     "All the way back from the very beginning of the Jewish people the Torah tells us that Jews go by the mother and not by the father.

     "Avraham had a son with his wife Sarah whose name is Yitzchak. He also had a son with Sarah's Egyptian maid servant. His name is Ishmael. Yitzchak is a Jew (we were called Hebrews then) because his mother was a Jew. Ishmael is an Egyptian because his mother was an Egyptian.

     "The problem is not only with the Reform teaching. Here in Israel, 72% of the Russian immigrants are not Jews! Only their father or grandfathers are Jews! Just because someone speaks Hebrew, and is an Israeli citizen, doesn't mean they are Jews!

     "The tribes and customs go by the father, and the people go by the mother. It has been this way all the way back to our very beginning,"