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By Dorothea Shefer-Vanson
 MEVASSERET ZION, Israel—— When 12-year old M. applied to attend the Jews’ Free School, the secondary school that was founded in 1732 and serves London’s Jewish community, he was not accepted. The reason? His mother was not born Jewish and her conversion was in accordance with the progressive, not the orthodox, stream of Judaism. Hence, the school authorities decided, neither M. nor his mother were Jews, and so M. was not eligible to attend the school.
The rule that Jewish descent goes according to the mother, and not the father, must have seemed very revolutionary when it was first promulgated, back in the mists of ancient and mediaeval history. In those days before DNA testing had become a matter of routine, when rape and pillage were often the fate of defenceless minorities, it was doubtless a very progressive decision for the rabbis of the highly patriarchal Jewish community. But such were the exigencies of those days that it must have seemed the only sensible way of ensuring the continuation of the Jewish people. It was less a question of race than of pragmatism given the prevailing situation.
But 21st century England is not a Polish stetl and M’s parents were not prepared to take the attitude of the school lying down, so they sued it for discrimination. Having lost, they appealed, and the original decision was recently overturned by England’s Court of Appeal, which agreed that basing school admission on the classic test that Judaism is based on the religion of one’s mother, no matter how rigorously the family adheres to the precepts of the Jewish faith, was definitely discriminatory. (The other side of the coin is that if your mother was Jewish it doesn’t matter how many of the precepts of Judaism you contravene, you’re still a Jew.)
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The British Court of Appeal pointed out that if a Christian school ‘refused to admit a child on the grounds that, albeit practicing Christians, the child’s family were of Jewish origin’ this would be equally unlawful. That rings an all-too familiar bell. After all, it’s not so long ago that having a single Jewish grandparent, no matter how sincere a patriot or devout a Christian one might be, defined a person as an inferior, second-class citizen. And we know where that led to. It’s not that anyone thinks for one moment that Jews would be prepared to undertake mass murder in order to ensure that their racial purity was preserved, it’s just that the idea of excluding the ‘other’ and upholding the concept of a select group that is inherently superior is far from alien to orthodox Judaism.
The Jews’ Free School has decided to take the decision of the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court, and now the entire Jewish community of Britain is expectantly awaiting its ruling on the matter, later this year. The decision of the Court of Appeal is based on the concepts of ethnicity, race discrimination and justice inherent in British law, while the decision of the school, which is upheld by the orthodox Jewish community, is based on ancient Jewish law. The question is, which of the two should prevail in a modern, enlightened society?
The Jewish community of Britain numbers some 300,000, and by no means all of them are affiliated with the orthodox stream, although the Chief Rabbi, who supposedly represents the whole community, is traditionally an orthodox rabbi. Throughout the ages, however, even orthodox rabbis have occasionally displayed wisdom in adapting traditional Jewish laws and practices to changing circumstances. Perhaps it’s time for some pragmatism to be introduced into an area which reeks of racism, exclusivity, and insularity.
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