Great Britain’s Supreme Court took up an old question: Who is a Jew? And who gets to decide?
While the surface case involved a challenge to the admissions policy of a London Jewish High School, it’s touched a nerve in Britain’s community of 300,000 Jews. The NY Times reports that
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.
The problem? Different denominations within Judaism (yes, Virginia, there are different denominations in Judaism) have different rules that apply to the question of “Who is a Jew?” (That’s nothing new; it’s been around for about 6,000 years, since Abraham and the dinosaurs walked the planet together and Ruth converted before marrying Boaz and descending David.) The school in question in Britain is Orthodox, which defines Judaism matralineally, which the appeals court determined was discriminatory; an ethnic test. It’s problematic that Britain’s government could determine a person’s religion that conflicts with what that person’s religion actually stipulates. Oy vay.
Israel has a Law of Return (LOR) that is the law of that land. Interesting cases in Israeli law:
- Brother Daniel case: born Jewish, converted to Catholicism, (became a monk), helped Jews during the Holocaust years. Decision: not Jewish. He converted away from Judaism. You can’t be two religions at the same time. This case sparked the enactment of the LOR and a major decision about conversion.
- Which denomination of Judaism’s conversions are recognized in Israel? After the Shoshanna Miller Case in 1980, the Neerman Committee was formed (but failed to pass a law) and in December 1998, Jerusalem District Court Judge Vardi Zeiler ruled that Conservative and Reform converts are allowed to be registered at the Interior Ministry as Jews, regardless of where the conversion took place. Following this case, appeals were expected and legislation has been proposed to allow only Orthodox conversions. The conversion issue has yet to be resolved.
