Who is a Jew, Again.
You might think we would be getting tired of this topic by now. But, no, we need to revisit it periodically just to forget about how many other worthwhile problems we could be addressing.
An Orthodox Jewish school in London was found guilty of violating UK racial discrimination laws. The problem at hand was that a 12 year old was refused admission to the Orthodox school because his mother had converted under the auspices of the Masorti movement. The problem lies in the fact that there apparently isn’t any other Jewish school available. It’s that one or none.
Now, technically, there really isn’t any good reason for the Orthodox to refuse to recognize Masorti conversion – like all halachic conversion, Masorti Judaism requires mikveh and milah (for males) and profession of a belief in one, unified, God. Much of the brou-ha-ha is about extra-halachic matters. But despite my opinion that the Orthodox are wrong not to recognize Masorti conversions, I still think that this is a bad idea.
Do we really want secular courts deciding who gets to be considered Jewish (or any other religion, for that matter)? I know that Europe views government interaction with religion quite differently than my government here in the USA (or in theory ought to, anyhow), and there are certainly circumstances in which it makes no sense for us to try to separate our opinions from the religious sensibilities that formed them (or not), as long as we try to be honest about where those sensibilities come from. But having a presumably secular government decide that the Orthodox have no right to exclude Masorti Jews is just a recipe for trouble.
The potential for other decisions to go awry is just too great. Now, if they want to rule that no school has a right to exclude anyone of any religion from enrolling, okay then, as long as they also grant that the school gets to insist on its curriculum without outside interference, and the enrolled student has to follow along if he (or she) enrolls.
In Israel, government participation in religious business has caused just no end of trouble. The founding fathers of the USA were more than right when they noted that a healthy religion is not going to be helped by having government promote it. Reading Steven Waldman’s book Founding Faith made me think a lot more of how religion developed in the USA — and why our secular government, with all its problems, works much better in the arena of helping religion by ignoring it than nearly any other in the world. Which is not to say that doing so hasn’t had its own problems. Certainly the idea of an agora for religious ideas has also resulted in people treating at least Judaism as if it were something one could choose in pieces, treating it as any other product, to evaluate on, say, whether it makes you happy, or is fun, rather than Judaism as something to which we might have to submit ourselves in order to make ourselves better, or our community better. Further, we need to realise that we might not be better off for choosing our community according to whom we like to hang out with, rather than being stuck with the lumpy mess that is true community. But overall, we are better off with a hands-off policy from the government.
Let the argument commence.
Separation of church and state normally talks about keeping religion out of government, but it’s equally vital to keep government out of religion.
But having a presumably secular government decide that the Orthodox have no right to exclude Masorti Jews just is a recipe for trouble.
Part of the problem here is that many religious schools in the UK (including this one) are government-funded. This story illustrates why they shouldn’t be.
The British Humanist Association’s press release on the case
http://www.humanism.org.uk/news/view/421
claims that “100% of the running costs are paid by the state and so there’s absolutely no reason why what is essentially a public service should be denied to any children whatever their beliefs or the beliefs of their parents.”
Do we really want secular courts deciding who gets to be considered Jewish (or any other religion, for that matter)?
Funny how you blame the religious school for government interference in religion. Not only was the school not the one who initiated the discrimination lawsuit, the school argued that governments should have no place in deciding who gets to define religion.
Now, technically, there really isn’t any good reason for the Orthodox to refuse to recognize Masorti conversion – like all halachic conversion, Masorti Judaism requires mikveh and milah (for males) and profession of a belief in one, unified, God. Much of the brou-ha-ha is about extra-halachic matters.
Extra-halachic stuff like belief in the authenticity of the written Torah, an Oral Torah, the coming of Messiah, and the resurrection of the dead? Is all of rabbinic halacha also “extra-halachic?” Can you see why Orthodox don’t recognize conversions which don’t require any recognition of fundamental Orthodox tenets?
Why would the parents want their son to be part of a Jewish school that doesn’t recognize him as a Jew, where he would be taught exactly why he is not a Jew?
Jacob,
I recommend studying the actual halachic sources on giyur, such as relevant passages from BT Yevamot, the Tur, Shulchan Aruch, etc, plus an understanding of the concepts of bvatchila vs bdeiavad, before making rash claims on how much “rabbinic Judaism” requires. I think you’ll be surprised.
Jacob, I’m pretty sure the conservative movement is actually on board with the authenticity of Torah (oral and written) as well as Mashiach and resurrection. Maybe this had led them to different conclusions, but I think these are things they believe…
Or expect their Rabbis to believe for them. Kidding 🙂
In Spain, where there are hardly any observant Jews in large numbers, the Chief Rabbi of Israel is now making decisions ofr the community as to who is a Jew.
So too they have excluded most Orthodox rabbis in North America from conversion.
Take a look at my blog – backed up by 2 stories in the Jerusalem Post, one on Galei Tzhal, and one in JTA.
http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/conservative/entry/lies_my_rabbi_told_posted
LIES MY RABBI TOLD ME
I am an Israeli. The name of the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of my country is Rav Amar.
Judaism goes to great lengths to show respect for the dead and dying. The High Priest, on his way to service in the Temple on Yom Kippur, must delay his religious duties if he is the only person available to bury a body. Respect for the dead is, simply put, a matter of paramount importance. Jewish tradition mandates that the terminally ill, their family, and ultimately the body be treated with awe and reverence.
So it is with the utmost disappointment, sadness and horror, that I share the following true story.
The Ben-David family are active members of the Jewish community in Madrid. Zohar Ben-David is Israeli born. His wife and his son, Gai, were converted to Judaism. Gai, a wonderful young man, recently observed his Bar Mitzvah. Sadly, he was also diagnosed with a brain tumor. The family did everything in their power but Gai’s situation deteriorated. As of last week he was unable to swallow or to even breath on his own.
Facing the inevitable, his brave father began to look into how his son would be buried. He was shocked to learn that the Chief Rabbi of Spain, Rav Dahan, would not authorize Gai’s internment in the Jewish cemetery without the OK of Israel’s Chief Sephardi Rabbi, Rav Shlomo Amar.
Gai was a rightious Ger (convert). His conversion included Brit Milah and Mikveh. He lived as a Jew, because he was a Jew. But, since the Beit Din that officiated over his conversion was made up of Masorti rabbis, Rav Amar was unwilling to temper his stern justice with a bit of mercy. This despite the fact that Jewish law, halacha, forbids the mistreatment of the convert, including reminding a convert that he or she was once not a Jew.
Rav Amar demanded that if the family wished their precious child to be buried in the Jewish cemetery he would have to be taken again to a Mikveh, in the presence of acceptable witnesses. This child, who had a respiratory tube in his throat, was unable to swallow and was being supported by a host of hospital machinery, could not be moved. But this did not move Rav Amar one iota. The suffering of Gai and of his family was irrelevant to Rav Amar. So easy was it to say no rather than look, with compassion, for a solution.
When contacted by Israel radio Sunday night, Rav Amar denied knowledge of this case. When confronted with evidence to the contrary, he said the Psak (decision) was not his to make but that of Rav Dahan. Rav Dahan reported to The Jerusalem Post that it was Rav Amar who made the final call that Gai be buried outside the main cemetery in an area in the very lower corner separated from the larger site.
How pathetic when chief rabbis abandon the truth and hide behind falsehoods and denials to cover base behavior. Let the rabbis stand up and take the heat for the damage they have done to the Ben David family, to the Masorti community in Madrid, and to Judaism.
Gai passed away on Friday. Rav Dahan and Rav Amar (in Spain for Hanukkah) did not budge. Gai was buried on the edge of the Jewish cemetery, on Sunday, in a special section reserved for outsiders. His soul will, I believe, be treated by God as that of a righteous Jew. The punishment, if it is to come, will be on those who caused humiliation and suffering to the Ben David family. Israel’s chief rabbi violated the principle of halacha which states: Better for one to hurl himself into a fiery furnace rather than shame his fellow in public.
There is an interesting postscript to this sad tale. Many leaders, and members, of Madrid’s Jewish community have signed a document stating that when their time comes (may it be a long time off), they would like to be buried in the very same area where Gai was laid to rest.
May Gai’s memory serve as a blessing to all of us. May the light of his life guide those who are unable to temper justice with mercy. May his family be comforted with the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.
Yonah – I am familiar with the Halachik sources. I also have a couple years of shimush bet din and experience teaching potential gerim to complement that.
The issue Orthodox Judaism has with Conservative and Reform conversions has not nearly as much to do with the level of observance of the convert (Orthodox conversions do not require the convert to be frum at conversion) as it does with the level of belief and observance of the institutions. Even getting past the issue of what the particular rabbis themselves believe and their individual kashrut, the conversion process is flawed because the religious institutions themselves reject the fundamental tenets of Orthodox Judaism.
David – Maybe this had led them to different conclusions, but I think these are things they believe…
You said it yourself: these fundamental tenets led the Conservative rabbis to different conclusions. I’m not sure that there is an authoritative credo of Conservative beliefs, however, I’d imagine that if there were and it was read in contradistinction to, say, Mishneh Torah, you would readily see that the differences are alarming.
Attention Masorti movement and others:
Jacob’s comments should make it clear that, no matter how “halachic” you think you are, ORTHODOX AUTHORITIES WILL NEVER EVER ACCEPT CONSERVATIVE JUDAISM OR CONSERVATIVE CONVERSIONS AS VALID. (After months and months of fruitless pursuit of “bipartisanship” on health care, Olympia Snowe still voted no on cloture, and Blanche Lincoln’s Republican opponent will still attack her as a socialist. No one saw that coming… except people who had their eyes open.)
The only solution is (in any order):
1) Develop a sense of self and sense of authenticity that doesn’t rely on Orthodox acceptance
2) Change the power structures so that Orthodox non-acceptance has no real-world consequences outside Orthodox communities.
Keep religion out of the government, and keep the government out of religion.
I was wondering when Jewschool was going to take this up.
First, I wanted to say I agree that it’s not a good thing to have a secular court making these determinations, even though I disagree with the Orthodox position here, and I also agree this is as good an argument as any for separation of church and state – including religious schools not taking government money.
Second, I wanted to bring up another aspect of this case that’s pretty interesting/worrying. Apparently the school has been ordered to institute (or is instituting, in order to comply with the court – not sure which) a test of practice to determine who is a Jew for purposes of admission, now that they cannot use family background for that purpose. Students have to demonstrate things like shul attendance, sabbath observance, acts of tzedakah, etc., to show they’re Jewish. My understanding here (and I hope some British commenters who can offer more than what I’ve read on this case will jump in) is that part of the school’s problem in making their case in court is that the non-Orthodox student was more observant than many of the students admitted as “halachic” Jews, and the school couldn’t explain to the court’s satisfaction why those less observant students were more Jewish. Looking at practice and belief strikes me as a very Christian frame here, even though the court is presenting it as a neutral test, and it seems to me that’s it’s a far more radical shift in determining “who is a Jew” than accepting non-Orthodox converts as really Jewish.
Third, apparently the school also has denied admission to the children of some Orthodox converts, one of whom was a teacher at the school. One of those Orthodox families joined in the lawsuit, which I’m sure also weakened the school’s case in front of the courts that this wasn’t a matter of a simple ethnic test. So this whole thing is intimately tied up not just with inter-denominational squabbles but also the whole crisis in conversions generally.
For further reading (and the source of a good chunk of what I’ve said above), see this New York Times piece on the case and this opinion piece from the Forward.
What I find most troubling about the Progressive Jewish response to this entire fiasco is how welcoming it is of government intrusion into freedom of religion where it meets their ends of achieving legitimacy in the Orthodox world. Why aren’t you bothered by the British courts dictating religious standards to the Jewish community, masked as a racial discrimination suit?
There is nothing racial about this case. The child was not rejected because of who his mother’s ancestors are, but because the mother didn’t fulfill a religious requirement — Orthodox conversion. If she, or the child, would satisfactorily undergo the process, the child would we welcomed in the Orthodox school. When the court instructs the school that they must welcome a child regardless of a jealously guarded religious requirement, the court is undermining the autonomy that should be given to all religions to define their membership.
Progressives are satisfied with the ruling because it makes the Orthodox look bad and makes them seem legitimate, at least in the British government’s eyes. What they cannot achieve through religious doctrine, they are happy to achieve through judicial fiat. This will ultimately cost them when they are forced to accept individuals as Jews who have undergone no conversion but can demonstrate minimal synagogue participation. No longer will one have to be Jewish in any institutional sense to receive the benefits conferred by religion, including marriage, leadership positions, burial plots, scholarships targeted towards people of the Jewish faith, or anything else where religious institutions have always been allowed to discriminate. Under the new rule of this decision, all you must show is racial discrimination to become a member of the Jewish community and share the benefits.
Why aren’t you bothered by the British courts dictating religious standards to the Jewish community, masked as a racial discrimination suit?
Uh, did you read the post? Who is the “you” here?
This isn’t a question of who is a Jew or of freedom of religion. The Orthodox are free to decide for themselves who is or is not a Jew. But they should not have the right to use that determination as a criteria for admittance to a government funded school.
and lets remember that in America, lots of people attend religious schools that are not of their religious faith. Jews go to Catholic schools, and yes, non-Jews go to Jewish schools. This happens in small numbers because if you are not Jewish you may not want to take a large number of Judaic studies classes, and therefore chose to go elsewhere.* Why does anyone care so much if there is a kid motivated to learn about Judaism who wants to attend a Jewish school? I assume the school will hold him to the same academic standards as the rest of the students.
(*anecdotally, it seems that Jewish schools get the most non Jewish students where the public schools are bad. A friend of mine atended a Jewish school in a low income area of a city, and the school had a policy of giving all full time staff free tuition for their kids. One of the gym teachers who was not Jewish and sent her kid to the school because it was better than the alternatives, of no extra cost to her, and the kid was willing to study hard for his Mishna tests. sounds fine to me).
I’m sorry, but I’m all with the court here. Jews don’t get to say that Jews are a racial group. If they do, you’ll have schools for whites or Chinese or Italians, who will all get to decide who goes to their schools.
A Jew, in this context, is sometone who acts as a Jew.
(Incidentally, this shouldn’t change even if the school gets no government funding at all).
Em- I read the post and already criticized the KRG above for misplacing the blame on JFS for bringing this before the courts. They were sued by this family — presumably with the approbation of Britain’s Progressive Jewish groups — and only did what they had to do to defend their position of religious liberty.
“You” collectively refers to Progressive Jewry in all of its permutations. I found a number of editorials from Progressive columnists celebrating the decision as a vindication of Progressive forms of Judaism. See, for instance, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/dec/16/jfs-supreme-court-ruling and also http://www.thejc.com/judaism/judaism-features/the-deep-wrongs-lie-heart-jfs-case.
r – The government has already accepted some form of religious discrimination in school admissions by allowing the school to admit only Jewish students. For as long as the British government chooses to fund a religious education, it should be up to the school to determine who can be admitted as a Jew into the school.
When the family sued the school for racial discrimination, it was a novel legal loophole for circumventing the government’s permission to use some form of religious discrimination for Jewish school admissions. As I pointed out above, saying that this constitutes racial discrimination is inaccurate; the discrimination serves religious purposes only and does not have any other invidious purposes.
I think this post misses the point. The issue at hand isn’t the school’s determination of what makes a Jew. The issue is whether a state-funded institution has the right to discriminate on what is arguably a racial basis. We can obviously debate that latter question, but we should make clear first that that is the question. The school can discriminate on any grounds it wants – but the courts have determined that it shouldn’t do so with state funds.
Now I realize that insofar as an Orthodox convert would be eligible for the school, perhaps “race” isn’t the most useful way of describing the school’s policy. But the policy certainly seems to have more in common with racial ways of determining affiliation than with other kinds; the vast majority of students at the school are eligible simply by virtue of the fact that their mothers have been deemed acceptably Jewish, not because of any practices or beliefs that they or their families hold.
On a related note, I’ve always wondered how this matrilineal stuff works. As in, you’re Jewish if your mother’s Jewish – and your mother is Jewish if her mother is/was Jewish. But how far back can you go with that before the whole thing becomes ridiculous? Does anyone really know for sure that their great-great-great-great-great grandmother was Jewish? How? And with the amount of chaos attending Jewish life in Eastern Europe (where my people are from), any number of things could have happened that would call that lineage into question. You know?
@Jacob:
KRG above for misplacing the blame on JFS for bringing this before the courts
Except that I didn’. If you reread the post, you’ll see that I think the whole thing is *a bad idea* Courts shouldn’t be deciding this issue, and the the fact that I disagree with the school, that Masorti Judaism does hold that oral law is binding, and that I think the whole thing is not right, I also think that suing the school in secular courts is a mistake and that it’s a terrible idea to mix the secular government up in the who is a Jew problem – it’s bad in Israel, and it’s just as bad in England. Sheesh, just try and agree with someone…. This is why Jews can’t move past this – we say we don’t agree with each other even when we do.
This is, of course, the result of the utter failure of the Progressive movement in the UK. In terms of Jewish community here, there’s Orthodoxy or nothing.
I kinda get the impression that most of us are choosing ‘nothing’ these days, and it depresses me.
KRG – It seemed implied that you were condemning the Orthodox school for the litigation, or at least for cementing this damaging position, by appealing the decision to the Supreme Court, because you criticized the decision immediately after stating your opinion on whether Orthodoxy ought to recognize Masorti conversions. It seemed as if you were saying as a matter of fact that it was Orthodoxy’s fault for pursuing the case and that they should have accepted the child without court proceedings that risked potentially damaging decisions. If you reread what you wrote, this was not an unreasonable reading of your post, especially given the context of this blog and the general Progressive response to the case. If such was not your position, I am sorry for pointing fingers.
Having said that, every point I made still addresses the general response that I have seen from Progressive (forgive me for lumping everyone together) sources, including many commenters on this article who seem to take a very different position on the Supreme Court’s decision than you do.
em writes:
First, I wanted to say I agree that it’s not a good thing to have a secular court making these determinations
KRG writes:
I also think that suing the school in secular courts is a mistake and that it’s a terrible idea to mix the secular government up in the who is a Jew problem – it’s bad in Israel, and it’s just as bad in England.
Let’s be totally clear: This school is a “comprehensive school” – i.e. the UK term for what we would call a public school in the US. (For weird historical reasons, “public school” refers to the snootiest of private schools.)
So it’s not merely a Jewish school that happens to be receiving some government funding; it’s a government-run school that happens to be Jewish. Given that, why shouldn’t the secular courts have a say in who gets to go to the school? It’s very problematic for the government to have authority over religious matters, but it’s just as bad for a religious body to have authority over a government institution. The only solution I see is for this school not to exist in its current form.
There is really no analogous situation in the US. The closest equivalent might be the (uninteresting) question of who can major in Jewish studies at a state university, or who can attend one of the new Hebrew-language charter schools. And the “who is a Jew” question never comes up in those cases because everyone agrees that you don’t have to be Jewish by any definition to study in those places. But this case in the UK is NOT analogous to a discrimination suit against a Jewish school in the US, because Jewish schools in the US are private institutions.
Jacob writes:
No longer will one have to be Jewish in any institutional sense to receive the benefits conferred by religion, including marriage, leadership positions, burial plots, scholarships targeted towards people of the Jewish faith, or anything else where religious institutions have always been allowed to discriminate.
Your slippery-slope concern assumes that there is a wall of separation between church and state that this Supreme Court decision is eroding. Unfortunately, this wall never existed in the UK. Fortunately, this means that non-state religious institutions are no more at risk of government intrusion than they were before this decision, which only deals with state institutions.
@Jacob -I have to say, I still don’t see it. In any case, thefact that we’re a progressive blog doesn’t mean we all have teh same politics about everything – I’m not Orthodox, but I fall pretty far on the traditional side of Conservative. IMO, Orthodoxy and the Conservative movement [ought to] have a lot in common.
Granted we don’t practically on some specific questions, nevertheless, some of those questions we differ on not because of halachic reasons but because of historical enmity between those who are Orthodox and the Conservative movement (agunot are a great example of this. The pieces that were put in place by the Conservative movement to deal with the problem were essentially invented by the Orthodox – but as soon as the Conservative movement adopted them they became verboten simply because of that fact). In any case, for me that means I don’t automatically dismiss Orthodox halachic reasoning or poskim out of hand – I don’t always come to the same conclusions, but I always take them seriously. SO, that’s just to say, don’t assume – u know y…
🙂
KRG writes:
The pieces that were put in place by the Conservative movement to deal with the problem were essentially invented by the Orthodox – but as soon as the Conservative movement adopted them they became verboten simply because of that fact
Now I see where Joe Lieberman learned his political strategy!
I think we’re failing to understand the point. In the UK, faith based schools can accept members of their own faiths *before* those of other faiths. The child must be a practicing adherent of the faith (catholics must be baptized and attend church, for example). This is the only grounds for favoring members of the faith around which the school is based.
Now, the school did not claim the child was not a practicing Jew. They said he could practice as much as he wanted, but his lineage was tainted and that he wasn’t a Jew at all. They also said that practice has nothing to do with Judaism. This makes their legal bias for members of the FAITH an illegal bias for members of the RACE. It has nothing to do with church and state at all. It’s all a matter of whether racial/ethnic groups get to choose to build institutions with public money that can keep people of other races out. The Jews say yes; the court says no.
(It also has to do with the fact that British Jews never thought they had to act Jewish to be Jewish, and society never did either. So they got to be members of the (Orthodox) United Synagogue whose membership is mostly nonobservant and not attend Orthodox shuls. Judaism was perceived to be an inherited trait and not something you necessarily have to “practice” to be an adherent of.)
Jacob writes:
No longer will one have to be Jewish in any institutional sense to receive the benefits conferred by religion, including marriage, leadership positions, burial plots, scholarships targeted towards people of the Jewish faith, or anything else where religious institutions have always been allowed to discriminate.
What you mean is, people will have to actually be Jewish to be considered Jewish. No more being born to the right mother (or wrong one) to get you the kibbudim you want.
@Amit,
Who is a Jew? Or, what is Judaism?
@Jonathan – depends on the context.
Judaism was perceived to be an inherited trait and not something you necessarily have to “practice” to be an adherent of.
Except that since the Torah was given at Sinai (or allegedly given at Sinai, if you’re Reform), Judaism has always been an inherent trait passed on through parentage. Now you’re fine with a secular court forcing the religion to change its 3000 year old eligibility requirements. Only proving my point …
Alright. This is always my confusion. If we don’t say that a Jew is a person born to a Jewish mother (or maybe father,) or somebody who undergoes the process of becoming a Jew under the auspices of a rabbi (there’s a lot of debate about which rabbis are “legitimate” of course,) . . . then how can we ever decide who is a Jew?
Is a Jew-for-Jesus a Jew? (most of them seem to consider themselves Jews)
Is somebody who eates pork a Jew? (Ben-Gurion)
Is a somebody who steals and lies a Jew? (Madoff)
Is a somebody who saves millions from suffering, and marries a non-Jew a Jew? (Jonas Salk)
Even more, anybody who reads JewSchool sees that there are about 1 million different ways to understand our Jewish sources/traditions . .. so how can we ever understand what Judaism is?
Maybe we don’t really need to define these things anyway . . .
Judaism has always been an inherent trait passed on through parentage
If that were really true, we wouldn’t have a category of mumar. Apostates might “be” Jews, but they aren’t Jews. Their wine is treif, their shcita is treif, they can’t count in a minyan.
this means that non-state religious institutions are no more at risk of government intrusion than they were before this decision, which only deals with state institutions.
Each of the examples that I cited are instances where private institutions are regulated by racial discrimination laws. A Rabbi could not, for example, refuse to marry an interracial couple because one of the partners is black, but at at least until now, could refuse to marry them because one partner did not meet a minimal religious standard.
If racial discrimination charges can overcome religious needs in the context of school admissions, it is not unreasonable — and a good attorney would certainly make the argument — that racial discrimination should make other religious requirements legally voidable.
The same with school hiring; it is not unforeseeable that a school will be sued on racial discrimination grounds for refusing to hire a qualified religious instructor who does not meet their definition of Jewish.
Jacob writes:
Each of the examples that I cited are instances where private institutions are regulated by racial discrimination laws. A Rabbi could not, for example, refuse to marry an interracial couple because one of the partners is black
Is this true? My impression was that a rabbi can refuse to marry whomever they want, for any reason or no reason (though a judge can’t). Is it otherwise in Britain?
Apostates might “be” Jews, but they aren’t Jews. Their wine is treif, their shcita is treif, they can’t count in a minyan.
Don’t conflate issues: mumar status is a penalty, not a revocation of one’s Judaism. A mumar’s child is still a full-fledged member of the Jewish community (assuming they don’t follow their parent’s deviant ways). The mumar themself can do tshuva and be re-instated as a kosher Jew for all matters.
I’m not an expert in either domestic relations law, US or UK, so I don’t know.
So it’s not merely a Jewish school that happens to be receiving some government funding; it’s a government-run school that happens to be Jewish. Given that, why shouldn’t the secular courts have a say in who gets to go to the school? It’s very problematic for the government to have authority over religious matters, but it’s just as bad for a religious body to have authority over a government institution. The only solution I see is for this school not to exist in its current form.
The secular courts clearly do have a say because the school is funded by the government. I certainly didn’t mean to say that the courts don’t have jurisdiction or acted improperly by taking the case, and the decision might well accord perfectly with what’s required under the Race Relations Act. What I meant is that more broadly, secular courts cannot settle the “who is a Jew” question, and it’s not particularly, uh, helpful to have them involved. I mean, we were handling this so well without them! j/k And again, I say that as someone who disagrees with the Orthodox position not just in an abstract way but in the very personal sense that they wouldn’t consider me Jewish. On the other hand, I disagree with Amit’s position that it should be practice alone that defines a Jew. That’s just not how it works in the real world. Just because culture is a construct doesn’t mean it’s not a real force in our lives.
As for the particulars of this case …
The only solution I see is for this school not to exist in its current form.
I pretty much agree with that, with the caveat that I’m not sure we’re still not applying an American context to the situation. Here, it’s quite clear: public schools have to take everyone, private schools set their own admission standards. (Charter schools mess with that a little, but I’m going to leave that aside for the moment.) Does anyone know for sure that the Race Relations Act wouldn’t apply if this was an entirely private school? I honestly don’t know.
Where I might differ a little in my interpretation of this case is that I think it cuts closer to the “who is a Jew” question than some of the other commenters seem to think. Obviously, the courts can’t force the Orthodox institutions to actually believe that this boy is Jewish. In a strict legal sense, the ruling only applies to who can be given preference for admission. (My understanding is that outside of London, the Jewish schools take a very broad view of who is a Jew because they don’t have enough Jewish students to fill the schools and they want a significant enough portion of the student body to be Jewish that the school retains a Jewish character, but that this school in London is usually oversubscribed, so they can be very strict, so strict that they are discriminating against even Orthodox converts.)
But … every religion with sufficient numbers has schools like this. The Anglicans and the Catholics and the Muslims and so on all have schools just like this Jewish school. (Again, we can’t apply an American context here.) And all those schools, if oversubscribed, get to apply their standards for who to give preference to. And in that context, a Christian frame of how to define religion was imposed on the Jewish community, which is, I think, problematic. Basically, all the other religions are getting to apply their own standards, and the Jewish community is not.
I also don’t think this standard is properly described as racial or ethnic. If the situation were reversed, and it was the boy’s father who had a non-Orthodox conversion, there would be no question that the boy was Jewish, even though his ethnic make-up would be identical. I’m not entirely sure what the word is for it … overly essentialist, hypocritical, bullshit, but not racist.
If a non-Jewish child wants to attend a Jewish school, what’s the problem? It’s not like he or she will spread some goyish bug around that corrupts the Jewish children. The whole thing spells like racism to me. Let all children go to Jewish schools if they want to! Who knows, maybe a couple of years in a school like that would turn the non-Orthodox Jew into the kind of convert the Orthodox rabbis welcome? It could be a win-win.
Jacob writes:
Don’t conflate issues: mumar status is a penalty, not a revocation of one’s Judaism. A mumar’s child is still a full-fledged member of the Jewish community (assuming they don’t follow their parent’s deviant ways). The mumar themself can do tshuva and be re-instated as a kosher Jew for all matters.
Jacob, this is a gross overstatement and oversimplification. While what you state here is indeed the position of R. Yosef Caro, it is by no means the exclusive view in the tradition. Many felt that an apostate does in fact become a Gentile and even among those who demurred from taking that position, some felt that the child is certainly not Jewish. I encourage you to look at Sefer Ha-Ittur, kof – Kiddushin, 78a, Bet Habehirah Avodah Zarah 26b and the lengthy treatment of this topic in Responsa Divrei Yatziv Even Haezer #62.
Like many topics, this one suffers from too strong a desire to read our technicolor halakhic legacy with a black-and-white lens.
adding support to r’ tucker’s response, the anxiety over the status of conversos was a prominent issue with a whole range of opinions in 16th century safed.