British Court To Define Jewishness

[HVC]

Once we figure out who the Jews are we should mark them and their descendants in some way so that the can be easily identifiable. That'll make sure everyone knows for certain who is a Jew and who isn't. I can't believe no ones ever thought of this before, it makes things so much easier.

[The Minsky Moment]

In other words, the government delegated the task of establishing who was a member of a particular faith to a "designated religious authority" of that faith.  This would imply that the criteria set by that authority are sanctioned by the government--the designated religious authority has acted on behalf of the government in setting the criteria--in affect acting as an agent of the government.

That is certainly how it would be viewed from a US law perspective, and that is how I see it.

I gather in the UK that the legal culture is a bit different, with different kinds of "quangos" and parastatals running about, and the UK lawyers don't tend to take such a binary view.  But it seems to me that ultimately someone is either holding the strings or not.

[Gups]

Which decision of the state was this? It's not mentioned in the Court's decision.

The present policy is to give priority to children who are recognised as Jewish by the Office of the Chief Rabbi (the OCR) or are following a course of conversion approved by the OCR.

More specifically, from the article in the OP:

Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.

In other words, the government delegated the task of establishing who was a member of a particular faith to a "designated religious authority" of that faith.  This would imply that the criteria set by that authority are sanctioned by the government--the designated religious authority has acted on behalf of the government in setting the criteria--in affect acting as an agent of the government.

The paper got it wrong. The Government has no power to designate a religious authority to define admissions criteria. Criteria are drawn up by the school. I suspect this stems from the fact that a religious school does have to have a designated religion, in this case, Jewish.

[BuddhaRhubarb]

Gups? Yay

[stjaba]

Update:

UK court accused of interfering in Jewish identity
By Michael Holden Michael Holden
15 mins ago

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain's top court was accused of interfering in religious matters after it ruled on Wednesday that a Jewish school was guilty of discrimination by refusing entry to a boy whose mother was a Jew by conversion, not birth.

The Supreme Court said the policy employed by the popular JFS school in London broke race laws by using ethnicity to decide which pupils to admit.

It was the latest in a number of decisions that have brought religious principles into conflict with secular laws in Britain.

Equality campaigners welcomed the verdict, but some Jewish groups said it showed the difficulty of applying modern law to 3,500 years of Jewish tradition.

They said the ruling, passed by five votes to four, would affect not only on Jewish schools but the whole community, as it meant judges were in effect deciding who was or was not Jewish.

"Essentially we must now apply a 'non-Jewish definition of who is Jewish'," said Simon Hochhauser, president of the United Synagogue.

The case was brought after the school refused to admit a boy, known as M, whose father was a practicing Jew and whose mother had converted to Judaism at a non-orthodox synagogue.

The over-subscribed school gave precedence to children recognized as ethnically Jewish by the Office of the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth.

This stipulates that a person is Jewish if they are descended through the maternal line from a woman who is Jewish, or if they have undergone an orthodox Jewish conversion course.

British faith schools are allowed to select pupils on grounds of religious belief, but the Supreme Court decided that JFS had breached the Race Relations Act as it had failed to demonstrate that its ethnic-based policy was proportionate.

NOT RACIST

However, the judges said JFS had not been racist in a pejorative sense.

Russell Kett, chairman of the school's governors, said it had wanted its test of 'Jewishness' to be based "solely on orthodox Jewish religious law, rather than on a series of factors which themselves have no relevance under Jewish law but which seem to support the notion of a test of Jewish practice required by the English legal system."

However, Rabbi Danny Rich, chief executive of the "progressive" Liberal Judaism organization, said Jewish identity was "primarily about thought and deed, rather than biology."

"We have consistently opposed the politically motivated admissions policy of the Jewish Free School (JFS) and are saddened that the board of governors of JFS, along with others in the community, have created this self-inflicted wound."

Of Britain's estimated 300,000 Jews, about three-quarters are affiliated to orthodox synagogues, the rest to progressive ones.

Broadly, orthodox Jews hold strictly to ancient Jewish law, while progressives follow more modern interpretations.

Britain's chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, said the closeness of the court's judgment showed how complex the issue was.

He welcomed a suggestion by the judges that the law could be changed to allow Jewish schools to operate a different admissions policy that addressed the issues of religious law.

In 2007, the government refused to exempt Roman Catholic adoption agencies from anti-discrimination laws that they said could force them, against their beliefs, to place children with gay couples.

On Tuesday, a registrar who was fired for refusing to carry out gay civil partnership ceremonies because they clashed with her Christian beliefs lost an appeal against her dismissal.

[Gups]

Here's the judgement

http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/docs/uksc_2009_0105_judgmentV2.pdf

5-4 is reallly unusual (not least because the default number of judges is 7).

Incidentally, some of you may remember that I had a case before the House of Lords, which turned out to be its penultimate judgement before becoming the Supreme Court. A very solid 7-0 victory.

[grumbler]

Here's the judgement

http://www.supremecourt.gov.uk/docs/uksc_2009_0105_judgmentV2.pdf

5-4 is reallly unusual (not least because the default number of judges is 7).

Incidentally, some of you may remember that I had a case before the House of Lords, which turned out to be its penultimate judgement before becoming the Supreme Court. A very solid 7-0 victory.

TLDR.

I am pleased that they reached a judgement, though. 

[Slargos]

How does it support your contention? I see no mention here that those Jews opposing the Orthodox are opposing the "by birth" contention.

What they object to, is the Orthodox stating what those criteria are (for example, more progressive congregations allow "jewishness by birth" to be patrilinial as well as matrilinial - in Orthodoxy, it is matrilinially only).

That would make sense of the hyperbole "40%" figure (surely you are not of the opinion that 40% of British Jews were not born Jewish?!)

I wonder why the debate has to be so muddled.

Would it be possible to determine a separate word for ethnicity-jewish, religious-jewish and tribal-jewish?

Really, though, I have a problem with the claim that it's possible to be born jewish. Other than some hypothetical jewish ethnicity how can one be an automatic member of a tribe or religion at birth? It's just not possible.

Though I'm all for discrimination, and I find it delicious how many people jump to defend it in this thread.

It's just a bit tiring that it always has to be about the jews.

Keeps me wondering how long you're going to be able to claim freebies off that whole holocaust incident.

[Malthus]

How does it support your contention? I see no mention here that those Jews opposing the Orthodox are opposing the "by birth" contention.

What they object to, is the Orthodox stating what those criteria are (for example, more progressive congregations allow "jewishness by birth" to be patrilinial as well as matrilinial - in Orthodoxy, it is matrilinially only).

That would make sense of the hyperbole "40%" figure (surely you are not of the opinion that 40% of British Jews were not born Jewish?!)

I wonder why the debate has to be so muddled.

Would it be possible to determine a separate word for ethnicity-jewish, religious-jewish and tribal-jewish?

Really, though, I have a problem with the claim that it's possible to be born jewish. Other than some hypothetical jewish ethnicity how can one be an automatic member of a tribe or religion at birth? It's just not possible.

There is nothing "hypothetical" about Jewish ethnicity.

Though I'm all for discrimination, and I find it delicious how many people jump to defend it in this thread.

It's just a bit tiring that it always has to be about the jews.

Keeps me wondering how long you're going to be able to claim freebies off that whole holocaust incident.

What on earth does this have to do with the Holocaust? 

[Admiral Yi]

There is nothing "hypothetical" about Jewish ethnicity.

What do you mean by this?

[Malthus]

There is nothing "hypothetical" about Jewish ethnicity.

What do you mean by this?

That pretty well all Jews view Jewishness as an ethnic identity and not merely as a religion. There is nothing "hypothetical' about it - it is a simple fact.

Ask any Jew - "is it possible to be an atheist Jew?" Something like 99% would answer "of course". Something like half the Jewish population of Israel is atheist or agnostic, no-one questions whether or not they are Jewish.

[Slargos]

There is nothing "hypothetical" about Jewish ethnicity.

What on earth does this have to do with the Holocaust? 

Sure there is. A person can ostensibly be a convert without being ethnically jewish, so in that sense a jewish ethnicity becomes a hypothetical excersise without further information.

I'm quite curious about how you track jewish ethnicity anyway. Is it a gene thing, or is it just "far enough back that we don't know whether the ancestors were jewish or not". Can ones offspring become ethnically jewish by way of marrying converts for 6 generations, or does one have to sprinkle some true jewish blood into the mix?

It's funny, when I talk about stuff like this I'm a racist, but when you jews do it it's not a matter of eugenics or racism, but simply your religious prerogative.

And the holocaust is naturally involved since there are few people who can discriminate so readily without being confronted about it like the jews with your cult of victimization. People here actually jump to the defense of discrimination based on ethnicity when it's jews doing the discriminating. I find that highly amusing.

But keep playing innocent, by all means. I am not emotionally invested.

[Slargos]

There is nothing "hypothetical" about Jewish ethnicity.

What do you mean by this?

That pretty well all Jews view Jewishness as an ethnic identity and not merely as a religion. There is nothing "hypothetical' about it - it is a simple fact.

Ask any Jew - "is it possible to be an atheist Jew?" Something like 99% would answer "of course". Something like half the Jewish population of Israel is atheist or agnostic, no-one questions whether or not they are Jewish.

I'm asking you, then.

If I convert to judaism, do I become a jew?

If I marry another convert, is our offspring then ethnically jewish?

[Malthus]

There is nothing "hypothetical" about Jewish ethnicity.

What on earth does this have to do with the Holocaust? 

Sure there is. A person can ostensibly be a convert without being ethnically jewish, so in that sense a jewish ethnicity becomes a hypothetical excersise without further information.

I'm quite curious about how you track jewish ethnicity anyway. Is it a gene thing, or is it just "far enough back that we don't know whether the ancestors were jewish or not". Can ones offspring become ethnically jewish by way of marrying converts for 6 generations, or does one have to sprinkle some true jewish blood into the mix?

When someone converts, they become Jewish. "Ethnicity" isn't the same as "race", you can *become* a different ethnicity by going through the right hurdles but you cannot *become* Black if you are White.

So, "ethnicity' has nothing necessarily to do with genetics. The rules are, you are Jewish if born of a Jewish mom or if you convert.

It's funny, when I talk about stuff like this I'm a racist, but when you jews do it it's not a matter of eugenics or racism, but simply your religious prerogative.

To be frank, you are a racist because you hate and despise people of other ethnicities and wish them harm. 

There is nothing "racist" in acknowledging the differences between ethnicities; the "racism" comes in when one expresses hatred for another ethnicity or race (really "racism" is bigotry specific to "race', but let's use it in the broader meaning).

Jews pronouncing a definition of what it means to be Jewish isn't "racism"; Jews expressing hatred or contempt for non-Jewish ethnicities is "racism".

Naturally as a dumb Swede you don't know the difference: as all Jews know, Swedes are all dumb as posts, and thus easy to exploit. 

[In case you didn't get it, that's an example ...  ] 

And the holocaust is naturally involved since there are few people who can discriminate so readily without being confronted about it like the jews with your cult of victimization. People here actually jump to the defense of discrimination based on ethnicity when it's jews doing the discriminating. I find that highly amusing.

But keep playing innocent, by all means. I am not emotionally invested.

Again, there are two relevant meanings to the term "discrimination":

One is essentially 'telling the difference between X and Y". That is what Jews are here doing.

The other is  a perjorative meaning, as in "racial intolerance and discrimination".

Again, I don't expect a dumb Swede to know the difference, etc. 

[Slargos]

Amusing.

So "you're not jewish enough because your mother wasn't born a jew nor converted in the correct temple" is a benevolent form of discrimination.

I wonder whether you believe this yourself, or if you're just arguing for the sake of arguing.