The Free Jewish School--Now Really Free

After a while, a person can only take so many "Who is a Jew?" stories. Especially if that person is one of those likely to be affected by the whole question, and especially since so many of them these days seem to involve some right-wing cleric somewhere who doesn't understand that he does not represent or speak for a Jewish community that is increasingly diverse, and that that diversity is a strength, not a weakness. So it was with great relish today that I stumbled upon this story in the New York Times regarding a court fracas over one school's definition of "Who is a Jew?"

Britain, unlike America, apparently allows state funding for religious schools reflecting persuasions from the Church of England to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and everything in between. Most of the time, it seems, schools accepting this funding cannot use religious criteria in selecting students for admission, but when there are more applicants than slots, denominations can favor their own members. Such has been the case at the Free Jewish School, a Jewish high school in London. Faced with more applicants than slots, the school decided to invoke an Orthodox definition of Jewishness to deny admission to a boy known only in the article, and in the court case, as "M". M's mother bad converted before his birth, but her conversion was overseen by a Progressive rabbi (Progressive being the British equivalent of Reform), and the school chose to follow the dictates of Britain's Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks--which is to say, it only considers Orthodox conversions valid. Hence, in the eyes of the school, neither M's mother nor M is considered Jewish.

The matter might have ended there, but M's family chose to sue the school, charging discrimination. And a court in Britain has agreed, ruling that whether the "traditional" definition of a Jew is "benign or malignant, theological or supremacist," the school cannot enforce it in light of Britain's Race Relations Act.

On the one hand, it's easy to look at this, from the other side of the Pond, and abhor the decision as a violation of the principle of separation of church and state, as it is understood and applied in America. Public funding for religious schools does not and cannot exist in America, and a similar case on our side of the Atlantic would doubtless result in a declaration that such funding is unconstitutional. There are also good reasons for Jews not to get the secular courts involved in what are purely internal Jewish affairs; it causes nothing but rancor and only further divides a divided community.

On the other hand, it's hard not to be supremely happy about a ruling that will, hopefully, make certain parts of the Jewish community grow up on "who is a Jew" issues. Far too many Jewish institutions allow the Orthodox to force exclusionary practices upon them. It is high time the rest of the community started forcing the Orthodox to distinguish between Orthodox space and communal space--and our Jewish schools are as good a place to start as any.

I am also heartened that this rulings means that the 1,900 or so students at London's Free Jewish School will be forced to meet an actual patrilineal child and start to deal with patrilineality as something other than an abstraction. In their hearts, I've discovered, the majority of Jews comprehend that, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, Jewish is as Jewish does. If a patrilineal child is allowed to sit down and study Torah and Mishnah alongside Orthodox Jews, the latter will find it more and more difficult to deny his Jewishness. For too long, people who don't fit into a narrow, Orthodox definition of "who is a Jew" have ended up in a double bind when it comes to Jewish education--first being denied that education on the grounds that they "aren't Jewish," and then, hypocritically, having it held against them that they didn't receive it.

Even in America, policies of this kind exist. The Solomon Schechter schools, the day schools of the Conservative Movement, denied children of non-Jewish mothers admission their classrooms for many years. I recall seeing a responsa on the Movement's website at one point describing what a school should do if it was ever forced to merge with a Reform or community day school, which might have patrilineal children in it. The responsa made clear that patrilineal children must be kept out of leadership roles in Conservative services, but that there should "be no segregation of any kind."

Translation: the school should practice segregation. It just shouldn't call it that.

This is the kind of nonsense the British court said "no" to in its ruling. And this is the kind of nonsense the liberal (and Liberal) majority of Jews here, in England, and in Israel should be saying no to as well. The Orthodox community needs to be put on notice that its narrow definition of "who is a Jew" is just that--the Orthodox community's definition, not the whole community's definition. The Orthodox can do whatever they like in their own shuls.

But everywhere else--in our community's schools, in our institutional charities, and in the policies of the Israeli government--we are going to be inclusive.