Faith schools - the JFS verdict is in - I have a question...

[ImSoNotTelling]

here for anyone who has been following this.

The courts have decided that JFS were acting unlawfully in refusing a place to a child on the grounds that his mother was not recognised as jewish by the orthodox church.

I have a question though. This ruling says that the school were discriminating on the grounds of ethniciy, and that is unlawful. But then why is it lawful for schools to discriminate on the grounds of religion? I thought it was illegal to discriminate against someone due to their religious beliefs?

AFAIK faith schools may use faith as part of their admission criteria (cf your local Catholic primary giving priority to Catholics etc), but not ethnicity.

I actually always thought that religious discrimination was unlawfull in the UK.

The religious schools arround here (not Jewish school though) do take people from all religions but give priority to children of the school's confession a bit like the "catchment area" for other schools which I think is fair enough as there are quite a few good non denominal schools in the area as well.

My best friend recently introduced us to a Muslim family they met at their Dd's RC school.

Mrs Badger I am sure I heard somewhwer that RC schools for exemple needed by law to have a certain % of non-Catholic children do you know if that is true?

don't know offhand, sorry

It depends how they are funded gorionine. I can't remember all the terminology, but if they are a certain type of funding they do not have to accept any students from outside the faith. Most of the schools around here have religious criteria and most do not have to accept children of other faiths.

the mother converted didn't she ? but her conversion to Judaism was still not accepted as she wasn't 'ethnically' a Jew, or born a Jew. So in other words it wasn't on grounds of religion that the son was refused a place as both parents are Jewish, but on the grounds of the circumstances of the mother's birth - her ethnicity - which isn't the same. Complicated though.

I wonder if it would be different if it was the father who had converted, since the Jewish bloodline is maternal.

In the article it says that the mother's conversion was done by the progressive people, not the orthodox, and as such it isn't recognised by the chief rabbi.

I have no idea though how easy/hard it is to convert to judaism the orthodox way.

I think it's all down to the mother donnie, if your mother is jewish then you are, and that's that. AFAIK (no expert!)

yes quite Imsonot - but I though JFS was quite a liberal progressive Jewish school; it is mixed for a start. So why is it bound by Ortho rules?It's not even vaguely ortho like Hasmonean, for example.

It's ridiculously ahrd- we asked at a visit (from interest BTW, not for me as a faith) and we were told that it invovled living a year with a Jewish family as only part of it,- immediately that would cut most people out wouldn't it? No matter what the faith was, I wouldn't leave my family.

looking at its website, JFS does say "the outlook and practice of the school is Orthodox".

I, too, have been following this story closely, as I find it brings up many many interesting questions for Jews and non-Jews alike.
I think the crux of this case rested in the fact that the young person in question was in a family that was observantly Jewish, but was denied a place based on the question of his mother's authenticity.
In believe the JFS case has brought to the forefront some questions about whether or not "Jewish" is a racial or a religious description.
I'm personally connected to this in that DP comes from a family which identifies itself very strongly with being Jewish, yet I am not Jewish by any definition. They are very clear that my children are not Jewish, even if we were to regularly attend synagogue. They see it as a racial/cultural descriptor, not solely one of religious affiliation.
Preferential places in other faith schools are determined by practice and attendance, not by heredity.

Sounds like the right decision to me. I don't think this case actually considered whether Judaism is an ethnicity and a religion, but found the school refused the child a place because of his mother's ethnicity, which is clearly racial discrimination. If she'd been born Jewish, he'd have been allowed in. Schools are allowed to give active worshippers priority, but not to refuse someone because of their lineage.

Orthodox Jews would be rightly outraged if someone discriminated against them because they were born Jewish - they shouldn't be surprised that it cuts both ways and they aren't allowed to discriminate against someone else for not being born Jewish!

(Always irritates me when Jonathan Sacks is described as the Chief Rabbi, IIRC he speaks for Orthodox Jews, not Reform. Mind you, he's pretty irritating anyway, has an awful smarmy voice).

It's because there is protection in law against racial discrimination, not religious discrimination, so usually discrimination by schools on the grounds of religion for access to faith schools is ok (well in law anyway). The problem here is that Jews are defined as an ethnic group (as are Sikhs). This was originally a positive step, to prevent discrimination against Jews, who would not otherwise have necesarily been covered. HOWEVER, the effect it has had here is that it has made what would be acceptable religious discrimination unacceptable racial discrimination.

I'm not keen on faith schools, however as I understand this case it was about the mother having converted in a progressive rather than orthodox shul. So yes, if she had been born Jewish it wasn't an issue; on the other hand, if she had been born non-Jewish but had the 'right kind of' conversion, her son would have been eligible.

So, for me it is the wrong decision. If we are going to allow faith schools, we have to allow those faiths to define what it means to be a practising member.

(Though as a very liberal sort of Jew, I do find the Orthodox very annoying sometimes. But there you go: four Jews, five opinions.)

Also seems to me that Jews are inescapably an ethnic group, as well as being a culture and a religion. Our equality laws can't really make sense of that.

It is a very complicated question isn't it.

So it is legal (for schools at least) to discriminate on the grounds of religious affiliation/practice.

But it is not legal to discriminate on the grounds of ethnicity.

However surely it is up to religions to decide what their rules are - and if they want to say that they will only admit people of a certain type then that is up to them surely?

For example there is a branch of christianity where I live where you have to be born into it - you cannot join. It is not an illegal religion. Or would it simply be unable to access public funds if it started a school?

I should probably mention that I speak as someone who does not believe that schools which receive public funding should be allowed to discriminate on the grounds of faith in the first place.

It's up to them wrt their religion, not wrt school admissions if they are state-funded (although they can give priority to regular worshippers, they can't refuse on grounds of race - I think in this case the family were practising.) And probably not wrt school admissions if they are private - not on grounds of race, I mean. Don't know if JFS is state or private?

JFS is state funded.

Hester, I don't agree with your reasoning about why you think the decision was wrong. As has been stated before by others, it would appear that the court did not make any ruling on who should or should not be considered Jewish. They were simply making a ruling on the legality of restricting access to a state service on hereditary (read racial) grounds. The young person was not considered Jewish due to his mother's status. Jewishness was in this instance based on hereditary, as Orthodox Jews believe it should be. I believe that if JFS was privately funded they could do as they wish. (I'm willing to stand corrected, if need be.)

It is an interesting case, because it wraps racial identity with religious identity, and brings a secular ideology into conflict with a religious one.

With regards to state funding for faith schools or not, I'm all for diversity and for a society that allows for numerous approaches to living to coexist. To require that everyone goes through the same secular system attempts to erase just that diversity. I also can understand how a parent would want for their child exposure to a more explicitly expressed moral framework than a secular school would allow. Therefore, provided faith schools adhere to our basic cultural mores (ie racial equality, human rights) I think the more the merrier.

The BBC article is quite interesting on this.

It makes it clear that, for example, on the previous admissions criteria the children of atheists and practising christians would be eligible for admission if the mother was ethnically jewish, while the dc in the disputed case where the father was ethnically jewish, mother converted jewish and the whole family actively attending synagogue would not be eligible.

That does seem pretty clearly anomalous and unfair, whatever you feel about faith schools in general.

I also think it is because race is not changeable - so to discrminate on race is inherently discriminatory becuase there is nothing the individual can do about it- whereas if religion is seen as a choice then if anyone has the ability to choose the religion then there is nothing inherently discriminatory

I think the Orthodox Jewish are very clear about who they accept as Jewish, and this case is not anomalous. My experience is that this is a racial/ethnic distinction, not one of practice. The BBC article you and the OP linked to just underlines this idea.

I also agree with the poster who suggested that one can't have it both ways. I read a previous article where a Jewish representative was stating that they want to keep the race protections for being Jewish. Fine, but you can't then turn around and say from a state support perspective that your religion protects you in racial discrimination.

yy zazizoma, that's the point I was making.

That concept of jewishness is fine up until it intersects with secular law regarding school admissions. To anyone other than (presumably) an orthodox jew, it seems radically illogical to admit, for the sake of argument, a baptised Catholic child to a Jewish faith school ahead of a practising jewish child.

And that's why to the secular state and the law that underpins it, it is very hard to argue that the admissions code is not discriminatory on ethnic grounds.

It would be the equivalent in a catholic school context of admitting a child whose grandparents came from West Cork but had never been inside a church in his/her life ahead of a child who had been brought up as a practising Catholic following his parents' conversion. It's a no-brainer.

Although interestingly, some of the more over-subscribed Catholic schools are now demanding that you supply not just the child's baptismal certificate, but also the baptismal certificate of at least one parent. Will be interesting to see if anyone takes that one to the schools adjudicator.

frogs, I completely agree with you.

Though an argument could be made that seeking a baptism certificate from either parent is indeed a matter of practice in that I don't believe that sacraments of communion, confession, etc, are available to those not baptised. A child who grows up in a family where the parents partake of those offerings would have a different relationship to them than a child whose parents do not. And nobody would ever deny the status of the child as Christian, regardless of their parent's status, unlike the JFS case, where the child was decided to be not Jewish based on his mother's status.

The judgment of the Supreme Court is quite readable (at least the early parts).