U.K. court: Jewish school's entry policy is racist





Britain's Jewish community is in an uproar over the Court of Appeal's ruling that a policy, exercised by many Jewish schools in the United Kingdom, of not accepting students whose mothers are not Jewish is racist.The decision overturned a ruling by the High Court in London.The case began when a British couple sued the largest and oldest Jewish high school in Britain - the Jewish Free School (JFS) - over its refusal to accept their son as a student because his mother did not convert in an Orthodox ceremony.The parents, who have remained anonymous, described as racist and illegal the school's refusal to accept their son because his mother was converted to Judaism in a Conservative ceremony. They say this is racist and illegal because the school receives government funding.Other couples whose children were refused entry by the JFS have also joined the suit.Faith schools may discriminate on religious grounds but the court held that the JFS policy involved a test of ethnicity, which is unlawful."The motive for the discrimination, whether benign or malign, theological or supremacist, makes it no less and no more unlawful," the three judges - Lords Justice Sedley and Rimer, and Lady Justice Smith - said. "The refusal of JFS to admit [the student] was accordingly, in our judgment, less favourable treatment of him on racial grounds...eligibility must depend on faith, however defined, and not on ethnicity.""Unless the Court of Appeal decision is overturned on appeal it will have a very serious effect on all Jewish schools and on many of our communal organizations," The BBC quoted Britain's United Synagogue as saying. "In future, all Jewish schools will need to adopt a religious practice test, until such time as the Court of Appeal's ruling is successfully overturned or a legislative amendment is made."Most of the 1,900 students in the Jewish Free School (JFS), founded in 1732, do not come from Orthodox homes. Nevertheless, the school is identified with the central stream of British Jewry, the United Synagogue, which accepts the authority of the London Beth Din, or rabbinic court. The London rabbinic court is considered more strict on matters of conversion than rabbinic courts in Israel.