British court says Jewish schools can't discriminate: Is this what it will take to end in-fighting?

This week, a British appellate court made a stunning ruling that impacts all Jewish schools in the country: It is personal acts of faith, rather than parentage or conversion, that determines who is a Jew, and who, therefore, may be admitted into a Jewish school.

That the country's 300,000 Jews were shocked by this ruling would be a bit of an understatement. It is the first time since the resettlement of Jews in Great Britain, more than 350 years ago, that the state has gotten involved in determining who is a Jew.

The court case came about when a boy was denied admission from a school that did not recognize his mother's conversion. She had converted at an "independent progressive synagogue," which is not part of the Office of the Chief Rabbi. The office, which represents the Modern Orthodox United Synagogue, does not represent all British Jewry.

The boy's family sued, on the grounds of racial discrimination, and lost the case. This week's appellate case court overturns the earlier ruling.

The three appellate judges, one of whom was Jewish, ruled that admissions criteria that give preference to ethnic Jews is a type of racial discrimination – and, therefore, is in violation of the country's Race Relations Act of 1976.

What this means is that until or if this ruling is overturned, no Jewish school, whether Orthodox or Reform, private or public, can refuse entry to Jewish children who do not have Jewish mothers. Eligibility for admittance must be based on whether the applicant's family practices Judaism.

Suffice it to say, the United Synagogue, the movement to which this religious school belongs, is appealing the case. They have already spent $250,000 in legal costs so far, and they are now taking it to the highest court in the land, the House of Lords.

What will it take to end the in-fighting?
This ruling is an interesting legal development, which I admit I am inwardly (and now, not-so-inwardly) cheering. It is discrimination to refuse to admit this child into the school. From what we know, his mother underwent a legitimate conversion procedure in a mainstream branch of Judaism, and to refuse his admission is to discriminate against him due to his ethnic heritage.

At the same time, it raises real questions. Where do we draw the line? To what extent can this, or any court, start determining who is or is not a member of a religious group? Can the court demand that a child of a Hebrew Christian congregation be admitted to a Jewish school? Will the court start investigating the details of every contested conversion procedure to determine which is kosher and which is not? And by whose criteria would such determinations be made?

It is a ruling that, if taken too far, could have damaging ramifications.

In an article in the Forward, the head of the Movement for Reform Judaism in Britain, Rabbi Tony Bayfield, voiced the same concerns. He said: “JFS denies Jewish status to converts from Reform, Liberal and Masorti, and we abhor that… . But we are also extremely worried about the state interfering in our right as a Jewish community to define for ourselves who is a Jew.”

That said, just because things could go too far, doesn't mean they will. What will it take to get orthodox religious groups (of every type of religion), to stop demeaning, negating and attempting to invalidate the beliefs and practices of their more liberal counterparts?

In America, progressive and orthodox Jewish movements have been arguing over these issues for decades, and we have seemingly gotten no where. Progressives have not only not any closer to gaining their acceptance, the divisions have only gotten worse as more and more families intermarry and produce children in these "blurred" Jewish/gentile categories.

How many Jewish children must face the pain of being told they aren't really Jewish – despite years of Hebrew school, holiday celebration and identity immersion – just because the rabbi who oversaw their mothers' conversion didn't go to the "right" rabbinical school? Or because, (like many of the people in the Bible, ironically,) it is their fathers, and not their mothers, who happen to be Jewish?

My stepdaughter experienced the pain of this discrimination firsthand last year. After an entire childhood of religious school attendance, a bat mitzvah ceremony, several weeks of vacation time and thousands of dollars in expenses, she got off the plane in Israel only to have some random Israeli guy tell her she wasn't really Jewish because her mother hadn't had an Orthodox conversion.

To say she was livid would be a bit of an understatement.