The American Jewish community has overlooked a recent British Supreme Court ruling potentially damaging to the Jewish community. What the British Supreme Court held was that membership in the Jewish faith on parentage alone is “racist and discriminatory.” An observant Jewish student applied for admission to the Jewish Free School and was rejected because he and his mother were not born Jewish, even though the two of them had been converted by a Progressive (Liberal in the United States) rabbi. Since the Progressive rabbi is not recognized by the Orthodox rabbinate, the conversions were invalid, thereby the student could not gain admission to the school. The Jewish Free School is a London “faith school” funded by the British government and admission is based on Jewish religious preference, but not on racial grounds.
According to the article published in the New York Times, Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle newspaper said, “ It speaks directly to the right of the state to intervene in how religion operates.”
The validity of the child’s conversion is not the issue. What is most significant is that the British Supreme Court of England whose nine member court are all non-Jewish have now ruled on who is a Jew. More importantly, they ruled that deciding who is a Jew according to lineage is not just discriminatory and racist but illegal, negating a tradition spanning nearly four thousand years.
The British Supreme Court now requires Jewish schools to forego parental lineage and replace it with belief and practice, which are the criteria for determining Christian affiliation. So for Jews in England, the law requires a new standard for admission to the Jewish Free School. Will Jews in England determine who is a Jew by recording synagogue attendance, holiday participation or rituals observed at home?
Most disturbing is that the secular government is defining who is Jew for us. Basing lineage on parentage is illegal in England, and this could spread to other countries, becoming a tool for anti-Jewish organizations happy to equate Judaism and Israel to racism. The courts in other countries must not decide the interdenominational controversy between the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox on the subject of who is a Jew. The British Supreme Court has ruled on an issue, setting a dangerous precedent for the Jewish community worldwide, and cannot be ignored.
Dr. Jonathan V. Plaut
Rabbi
