Who Is a Jew? Court Ruling in Britain Raises Question - NYTimes.com - The Diigo Meta page

• 11 Nov 09
  

  dflaw5l

  Judaism

  • This is potentially the biggest case in the British Jewish community’s modern history,”
  • 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.
  • 12 more annotations...
  • • the court concluded that basing school admissions on a classic test of Judaism — whether one’s mother is Jewish — was by definition discriminatory.
    • 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 case’s importance was driven home by the sheer number of lawyers in the courtroom
    • the Court of Appeal ruling threw the school into a panicked scramble to put together a new admissions policy
    • a “religious practice test,” in which prospective students amass points for things like going to synagogue and doing charitable work.
    • ed to all sorts of awkward practical issues,
    • “Whatever happens in this case, there must be some resolution sorted out between different denominations,
    • Orthodox Jews, of course, sympathize with the school,
    • So little does observance matter, in fact, that “having a ham sandwich on the afternoon of Yom Kippur doesn’t make you less Jewish,”
    • thers are in complete sympathy with M.
    • “The Orthodox definition of Jewish excludes 40 percent of the Jewish community in this country.”
• 10 Nov 09
  

  Nathan Rein

  Fascinating article -- a UK court has declared that any definition of Judaism based on descent -- i.e., on whether an individual's mother is Jewish -- is ipso facto discriminatory and thus illegal. The context was an admissions policy for a publicly-funded Jewish school, which had excluded a student applicant because the school's Orthodox policy did not recognize the mother's conversion, conducted in a liberal setting, as valid and thus did not accept the applicant's claim to be Jewish. Archived: http://sqrl.it/?l3q8t and http://www.webcitation.org/5lBnaZcq8

  uk judaism religion news rels328 identity belief theory post:facebook(source) webcite iterasi

• 

  Erick Sanchez

  religion Jewish Britain court legal

• 08 Nov 09
  

  PB Schechter

  British courts decide who is a Jew, for purposes of preferential admission into state-funded religious schools. The question of "religion" vs. "ethnicity" is brought to the fore.

  Who is a Jew religion ethnicity

• 

  barbcrick
• 

  T. Rex Bean

  jews juddaism uk religion

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