I spent part of my Sabbath afternoon reading the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Purifying the Jewish bloodline was a major pre-occupation of Ezra the Scribe and of Judaism in general.
Ezra led a large body of exiles back to Jerusalem, where he discovered that Jewish men had been marrying non-Jewish women. He tore his garments in despair and confessed the sins of Israel before God, then braved the opposition of some of his own countrymen to purify the community by enforcing the dissolution of the sinful marriages. Some years later Artaxerxes sent Nehemiah (a Jewish noble in his personal service) to Jerusalem as governor with the task of rebuilding the city walls. Once this task was completed Nehemiah had Ezra read the Law of Moses (the Torah) to the assembled Israelites, and the people and priests entered into a covenant to keep the law and separate themselves from all other peoples.
This philosophy should ring true to nationalists of all stripes. If you love your in-group, you don’t want your members marrying out and you don’t want out-groups polluting your in-group, and you don’t want your civilization dominated by alien influences and you want to separate your in-group in general from out-groups.
I heard of a major political movement in the 19th and 20th Century that was also concerned about blood lines.
Blood and Soil (German: Blut und Boden) refers to an ideology that focuses on ethnicity based on two factors, descent blood (of a folk) and territory. It celebrates the relationship of a people to the land they occupy and cultivate, and it places a high value on the virtues of rural living.
In addition to being an Orthodox Jew and an American, I am also an Australian, a citizen of a country that was primarily founded and developed by the British. I feel a special attachment to Australian soil and to Aussies and Brits.
You don’t have to be a Nazi to be interested in your bloodline. A healthy civilization must take an interest in that or it will attract parasites who suck it dry and leave it but a husk.
It makes sense to me that many different peoples are concerned with their lineage. It seems healthy to take an interest in your ancestors. For $99, for instance, you can take a DNA test through 23andMe.com.
Ezra 10:17 says: “And they made an end with all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the month.”
According to Maimonidies Laws of Kings, the Messiah will do important work in this area:
In the era of the Messianic King, when his kingdom will be established and all of Israel will gather around him, all of them will have their pedigree determined by him,46 by means of the Holy Spirit that will rest upon him, as it is said, “He will sit as a refiner and purifier.”47 First he will purify the descendants of Levi,48 saying “This one is a legitimate Kohen (priest), and this one is a legitimate Levite,” while diverting those of improper lineage to the [rank of] Israelites.49 Thus it is said, “The governor [Nechemiah] said to them… until there will rise a Kohen with the Urim and Tumim;”50 from this you can infer that the determination of presumed pedigree and the public declaration of lineage is by means of the Holy Spirit.51
As for the Israelites, he will only determine their tribal lineage, that is, he will inform that “this one is of such-and-such a tribe and that one is of such-and-such a tribe.”52 He will not pronounce on those presumed to be of legitimate ancestry that “this one is a mamzer and that one is a ‘slave’;”53 for the law stipulates that once a family is intermixed [with the Jewish community at large] it remains intermixed…
