London – The case of a Jewish school accused of breaching race relations laws could have ramifications for other faith schools, the government says.
The Supreme Court case centres on the refusal of London school JFS to admit a boy whose mother converted to Judaism in a way that it does not accept.
Appeal Court judges held that as Jews are an ethnic group, denying places on these grounds is racial discrimination.
A government submission said the result may affect all Jewish and Sikh schools.
This is because in nearly every case members of the Jewish and Sikh religion are also members of a particular ethnic group related to their faith.
The boy in question, known as M, has a father who is Jewish by birth and a mother who is Jewish by conversion.
But the ceremony was conducted by a Progressive rather than an Orthodox synagogue which is not recognised by the Office of the Chief Rabbi (OCR).
The OCR only recognises children born of Jewish mothers as truly Jewish and this is the test the school uses in its admissions rules.
The Court of Appeal held in July that because Jews are also defined as an ethnic group under the Race Relations Act, denying a child admission solely on the basis that their mother is not Jewish would count as unlawful racial discrimination.
But the JFS argued in court that its admissions policy of giving preference to Jewish children when the school is oversubscribed is based on religious rather than racial grounds.
However, in a submission to the court, the Department for Children, Schools and Families said there could be ramifications for some faith schools where the faith is linked to race.
The school, a successful and oversubscribed secondary in the London Borough of Brent, claims on its website that it reflects “the very wide range of the religious spectrum of British Jewry”.
It says: “Many come from families who are totally committed to Judaism and Israel; others are unaware of Jewish belief and practice.
“We welcome this diversity and embrace the opportunity to have such a broad range of young people developing Jewish values together,” it says.
(Source: BBC)
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6 Responses
Lessons for America:
1. It is a bad thing to accept government (or other non-Jewish, or even non-frum) financial support for Torah institutions. “He who pays the fiddler, call the tune”.
2. Frum schools should require all students to be frum. While being descended from a Jewish woman is a prerequisite to being Jewish, only someone who holds by Torah and Mitsvos is really Jewish, at least from our perspective. Indeed, being “Dan le-Kaf Zechus” we should assume that a non-observant Jewish is really not Jewish after all.
“Many Jews hold distorted views, and many of them are misleading others. Our uninformed Jewish brothers (tinokos she’nishbu) are deteriorating further and further. At such a time, it would clearly be completely unthinkable for us to remain idle and watch holiness be profaned. We are obligated to save them, for all of the Jewish people are responsible for one another.”
HaRav Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, Shlit”a
Motzei Shabbos Kodesh, Parshas Vayishlach; Kislev 18, 5753
akuperma – you must have pretty big shoulders to oppose the gadol hador in saying that “non frum” Jews are not Jews and that we should abandon them.
So, who exactly is deliberately disassociating himself with Torah and Mitzvos?
If you an ethnic, community school, and solicit money from outside the Orthodox Jewish community, you end up in a situation in which you have ethnic Jews getting involved and object to the school’s religious discrimination against those Jewish students whose family minhagim (such as driving on Shabbos, eating treff, regarding underwear as outerwear, etc.) differ from those of traditional Jews.
It was the Yiddish socialists who tried to redefine Jews as a “folk” rather than religiously.
While that might make sense in a world in which racial anti-semitism (such as Germany in the pre-WWII era) is prevalent, racial anti-semitism is virtually non-existent in the United States (i.e. assimilated Jews are accepted and able to assimilate in peace).
akuperma – I am not necessarily opposed to the point you just made nor the first point in your first posting.
What I am completely opposed to, though, is your heretical and ignorant comment that “non frum Jews” are not Jews.
I will give you dan le kaf zechus and assume that I misinterperted your comment…
Would you care to clarify your implied opposition to R’ Elyashiv, as well as many other Gedolei Yisroel (including the Chofetz Chaim)?
akuperma: “While being descended from a Jewish woman is a prerequisite to being Jewish, only someone who holds by Torah and Mitsvos is really Jewish, at least from our perspective. Indeed, being “Dan le-Kaf Zechus” we should assume that a non-observant Jewish is really not Jewish after all.”
You need to think carefully before you write things like this. Nowhere in the Torah does it state that only those who observe mitzvos are Jewish, and writing that only pushing people away from their heritage.
Akuperma, you have no idea what you’re talking about. This has got nothing at all to do with accepting government money. The Race Relations Act applies to every school, whether it receives money or not. An intermarried couple applied to send their sheigetzl to the school, and when the school rejected him they went to court. The school’s funding sources are completely irrelevant, and bringing up the issue of funding is a dishonest attempt to throw dust in people’s eyes.
If the court had simply ordered the school to accept goyim, that would only be half a tzorah; there’s no halacha against doing so. But that’s not what happened. The law explicitly allows religious schools to discriminate on the basis of religion. Instead, the court decided to pasken a halacha for itself, and change the definition of who is a Jew. The court ruled that the sheigetz IS A JEW, and that the halacha laid down by Hashem Himself, which says otherwise, is racist and therefore invalid! With this decision, the court declared war on Hashem. This is an unbearable chutzpah, and that is why it must be fought.
As for your suggestion that schools admit only frum kids, it is utterly beneath contempt. It is the most disgusting thing I’ve heard in a long time. JFS isn’t for frum kids; it exists to bring Hashem’s lost sheep back, and the very idea that it should stop doing so, let alone the idea that those who are not frum are not Jews, is apikorsus. Jews are a NATION, not a religion. We are first and foremost AM Yisroel, not “emunas Yisroel”. Hashem’s bris is with us as a nation, not just with those among us who try to keep its terms. And like every nation on earth, Am Yisroel transmits its citizenship primarily through descent. To deny this is apikorsus.