The JFS may have won but it can still change its mind

So the JFS has won its court case. The Judge decided that to rule against them would bring down the whole faith school network. He probably made the right decision.

But JFS has no cause for self congratulation. Its behaviour has been entirely wrong.

I'd better fill you in if you haven't been following the case.

JFS had been accused of racially discriminating against parents becuase it was willing to accept the children of Jewish born atheists but not those of observant parents where the mother had converted.

In the case of the Lightman family the mother had an Israeli conversion. She actually teaches at JFS and they are observant. Yet the school, using the Chief Rabbi's office to make the decision on Jewish status, has not accepted the conversion and therefore has not provided a place to the Lightman's daughter.

Legally they have been found to be within their rights. But just because it is legal, doesn't make the action correct.

The school is using large sums of public money. It should employ a generous and enlightened attitude to Jewish status, doing its best to provide places for observant Jewish families willing to attend.

To apply a small minded, nit picking, sectarian definition of Judaism is shameful in these circumstances.

These are very good people, trying their best to serve the community and doing spectacularly well at it most of the time but they have, I beg them to see, made a mistake.

It is their right to exclude families like the Lightmans and now they have established that it is their right. Can they not now allow compassion, common sense and generosity to prevail?

There is no point in prayer and religion if it doesn't allow for that, is there?

It's not too late.

Comments

[Lee Jakeman]

I agree. This makes the Jewish community appear "racist" and "elitist" - giving credibility to what anti-semites often say about Jews. A sincere convert to Judaism is far more likely to take Judaism seriously than a half-hearted "native".

[Marksany]

I'm afraid that this article demonstrates why the state should not fund religious schools. How dare some Rabbi decide my kids are not good enough to go to a school funded by my taxes. If people want to separate their kids form their neighbours, let them pay for it. If the school operated the way DF wants, it would still be unacceptable to me.

[Paul]

Compassion, common sense, and generosity sound good, but let's not be naive just because somebody used the word "religion". Sadly, the Lightman family appears to be caught up in a longstanding dispute between 2 legal jurisdictions: the London bet din, which is the religious authority for JFS but has no direct standing under UK law, and the Israeli conversion bet din, which has legal standing under Israeli family law. The Israeli bet din exercises leniency with respect to the degree and sincerity of the convert's commitment to Judaism, on the grounds that it is in Judaism's interest not to have many cases of unclear status, which have resulted mainly from Communist suppression of Judaism. The London bet din exercises strictness on the grounds that it is in Judaism's interest not to have many uncommitted Jews. A huge dispute has erupted in Israel about whether the Israeli conversion court has gone beyond leniency to actual illegality. In some cases -- and I claim no knowledge of the Lightman case -- a conversion performed in Israel would not have been performed in London, and is not accepted by the London bet din. It's the dayyanim (bet din judges) in Israel who need to sort this out in a compassionate way. There's nothing the school can do.

[Josh]

As an ex-JFS student who left in part over objections to the way religion is imposed at the school, I don't bear them any great love. I would say, though, that it's simply impossible for kids who aren't Jewish by the same definition as JFS is a Jewish school to be admitted - or at least, without admitting everyone, regardless of religion. There's no room for debate or wriggling because the laws of JFS-style Judaism are hard-coded and can't be argued with. Under those laws, the kid isn't Jewish, and that's the end of the story. Just because some other religion which styles itself by the same name would say the kid is part of that religion doesn't make it eligible for JFS.

Personally, I find the whole situation distasteful, but I'm under no illusions; it's either this, or not allowing Orthodox-Jewish schools, because you can't impose a non-orthodox definition of Judaism on an Orthodox community - they're not the same religion, even though they go by the same name.