Military History | How To Make War | Wars Around the World Rules of Use How to Behave on an Internet Forum
Israel Discussion Board
   Return to Topic Page
Subject: Who is Jewish. From the NYT
Hugo    11/13/2009 4:52:50 AM
Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question Sign in to Recommend Twitter Sign In to E-Mail Print Reprints Share Close LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy SARAH LYALL Published: November 7, 2009 LONDON — The questions before the judges in Courtroom No. 1 of Britain’s Supreme Court were as ancient and as complex as Judaism itself. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image NI Syndication David Lightman with his daughter, who was denied admission to the Jews' Free School because her mother's conversion was not recognized. But a court ruling has voided the admissions policy. Who is a Jew? And who gets to decide? On the surface, the court was considering a straightforward challenge to the admissions policy of a Jewish high school in London. But the case, in which arguments concluded Oct. 30, has potential repercussions for thousands of other parochial schools across Britain. And in addressing issues at the heart of Jewish identity, it has exposed bitter divisions in Britain’s community of 300,000 or so Jews, pitting members of various Jewish denominations against one another. “This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history,” said Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper here. “It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how a religion operates.” The case began when a 12-year-old boy, an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, applied to the school, JFS. Founded in 1732 as the Jews’ Free School, it is a centerpiece of North London’s Jewish community. It has around 1,900 students, but it gets far more applicants than it accepts. Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority. By many standards, the JFS applicant, identified in court papers as “M,” is Jewish. But not in the eyes of the school, which defines Judaism under the Orthodox definition set out by Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Because M’s mother converted in a progressive, not an Orthodox, synagogue, the school said, she was not a Jew — nor was her son. It turned down his application. That would have been the end of it. But M’s family sued, saying that the school had discriminated against him. They lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeal this summer. In an explosive decision, the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory. Whether the rationale was “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist,” the court wrote, “makes it no less and no more unlawful.” The case rested on whether the school’s test of Jewishness was based on religion, which would be legal, or on race or ethnicity, which would not. The court ruled that it was an ethnic test because it concerned the status of M’s mother rather than whether M considered himself Jewish and practiced Judaism. “The requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court said. It added that while it was fair that Jewish schools should give preference to Jewish children, the admissions criteria must depend not on family ties, but “on faith, however defined.” The same reasoning would apply to a Christian school that “refused to admit a child on the ground that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin,” the court said. The school appealed to the Supreme Court, which is likely to rule sometime before the end of the year. The case’s importance was driven home by the sheer number of lawyers in the courtroom last week, representing not just M’s family and the school, but also the British government, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, the United Synagogue, the British Humanist Association and the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Meanwhile, the Court of Appeal ruling threw the school into a panicked scramble to put together a new admissions policy. It introduced a “religious practice test,” in which prospective students amass points for things like going to synagogue and doing charitable work. That has led to all sorts of awkward practical issues, said Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, because Orthodox Judaism forbids writing or using a computer on the Sabbath. That means that children who go to synagogue can’t “sign in,” but have to use methods like dropping prewritten postcards into boxes. It is unclear what effect the ruling, if it is upheld, will ha
 
Quote    Reply

Show Only Poster Name and Title     Newest to Oldest
Pages: 1 2
Ezekiel       11/14/2009 2:02:21 PM
The Jews very early on asked and answered the cultural question who was a Jew.
 
Matrilineal descent (descent from Jewish mother) or by rabbinic conversion according to the Talmud (oral law).
 
These strictures have been in place well before the Romans were still romping around.
  
Though their is a desire by unobservant Jews or Jews who subscribe to more assimilated notions of Jewish law to dilute and universalize, in the end of the day this question has been more then refined within Jewish dialectic for a couple of mellenia and cannot be jerrymandered in by an onerous and intrusive british judgement.
 
Also the statistics of Jewish assimilation (even with its easier conversion) within conservative and reform has reached catastrophic numbers...these Jewish communities are barely able to keep parity let alone growth....the orthodox community are growing and thriving....the proof is in the pudding!
 

 
Quote    Reply

Hugo       11/14/2009 3:05:08 PM
As far as I'm concerned a Jewish school ought to be given the freedom to determine who is a Jew and who isn't.  If that means only accepting conversions that are ordained by the ultra-orthodox then so be it.  But then they ought not have their hands stretched out for public money.  Once you accept that money you play by the rules of those giving it.
 
Quote    Reply

YelliChink       11/14/2009 5:26:03 PM
Can somebody answer me this:
 
According to Chinese tradition, if your father is Chinese, then you are Chinese.
 
What if a Chinese man married a Jewish woman? Then what are the children? Chinese or Jewish?
 
Quote    Reply

Hugo       11/14/2009 6:33:02 PM

Can somebody answer me this:

 

According to Chinese tradition, if your father is Chinese, then you are Chinese.

 

What if a Chinese man married a Jewish woman? Then what are the children? Chinese or Jewish?



Both?  I don't think they are mutually exclusive.
 
Quote    Reply

Ezekiel       11/15/2009 6:14:43 AM
If your mother is Jewish then you are considered Jewish according to Jewish standard/tradition and culture....
 
Quote    Reply

Heorot    Ezekial   11/15/2009 8:21:17 AM
Surely that argument is the crux of the dispute and is the Orthodox view. There are many Jews that do not necessarily accept the exclusivity of that view. Since they disagree with the Orthodox tenet in this case, does that disqualify them from being considered Jewish?
 
Quote    Reply

Heorot    Ezekial   11/15/2009 8:26:33 AM
Just to be clear, I sort of agree with Hugo about accepting money from the state. However, I would go further and ban all religious schools of whatever faith from being subsidised. By all means have religious schools, but fund them out of their own subscriptions.
 
In my view, schools that accept state money should have NO religious teaching at all.
 
Quote    Reply

Ezekiel       11/15/2009 9:08:51 AM

Surely that argument is the crux of the dispute and is the Orthodox view. There are many Jews that do not necessarily accept the exclusivity of that view. Since they disagree with the Orthodox tenet in this case, does that disqualify them from being considered Jewish?

I understand that it is the orthodox line. Jewish history has shown that their has been differing streams of judaism, For instance the Karaits or the saducees and the pharasees... Rabbinic (talmudic) judaism has been the governing dialectic within Jewish culture for over 2500 yrs and has survived the extinct alternative streams of Judaism. As we see with conservatism and reform which evolved from enlightenment germany in the early 18th century. Where German Jews wanted the Jewish identity fit into the German identity (we all saw how that story ended). These streams are witnessing catastrophic assimilation rates where they can barely keep parity....whereas orthodox streams (their multiples camps within:hassidic, mitnagdim, traditional, modern, litvack) are growing and prospering.
 
Diluting the membership criteria and abandoning tradition exegesis on the issue of conversion has not helped the situation either. Also Orthodox Judaism still represents the mainstream of Jewish spirituality in Israel and even many secular Jews whom when do participate in Jewish ritual prefer a more authentic orthodox community then a universalistic progressive 200 yr old form of Judaism that cannot regenerate itself.
 
I also agree that if money is taken, strings are attached....the 300+ yr old Jewish communities in Britain must make a choice of how to react to such intrusive actions, just as the british government is making a choice to be intrusive. I for one would advocate ceasing to take the money!!!
 
Quote    Reply

Shirrush    Well!   11/21/2009 4:34:51 PM
I'm not going to argue with Ezekiel counter-strategic Orthodox views. I'm Orthodox myself, yes, vermin-eating, Shabbat smoking, Kippur-cycling secular, but Orthodox nevertheless, and I'm also lucky enough to have made children with a Jewish woman. Orthodox exclusiveness causes untold suffering in many families, like this young man who came alone to France as a Jewish refugee from Algeria, met a nice local Shikse, fell in love with her and had children with her, to whom he gave a thoroughly Jewish education, and who was refused conversion when his first son came of Barmitzvah age.
 
This British case is puzzling: the only wish of this Lightman family is to grant their child a Jewish education. Do they have to be Jewish in the rabbinical sense? Hell no! When I was a kid in the EEIF, the French Jewish Scouts, there were a few goyish kids with us, for the simple reason that these kids wished to remain with their Jewish friends, and that the movement could not legally refuse them since it is taking public money off the Ministry of Youth an Sports, which has clear anti-discrimination guidelines.
Even though the Scouts are a rather observant, kippa-capped, Modern Orthodox organization, there never was any problem with these kids not being Jewish, the only difference being that they did not have to attend services, while we had to use lots of cunning to shirk them.
 
I attended a Catholic school for my last year of high school, where I felt a level of acceptance I had never encountered in the public, secular education system. Why can't non-Jewish kids attend JFS if they so wish?  
 
Quote    Reply

battar    The geography of conversion   11/29/2009 3:09:54 PM
It isn't a question of who is a Jew - It is a question of who gets to decide which conversion is valid and which isn't. Apparently, geography is also a factor - a person considered a bona-fide Jew in the US (my wifes' nephew, for example, born to a convert mother) isn't considered Jewish in Israel (different rabbis with different opinions on conversion). I haven't been able to determine at what point during the flight from New Jersey to Tel-Aviv he stops being Jewish (or becomes Jewish again on the flight back), but it does strike me as ridiculous. If being Jewish is a matter for subjective opinion, it can't be all that important.
You could always double-convert the pupil and problem solved.
 
Quote    Reply
1 2



 Latest
 News
 
 Most
 Read
 
 Most
 Commented
 Hot
 Topics