Jewish School Policy Racist: UK

[maven]

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

By Assaf Uni and Anshel Pfeffer,
Haaretz.


Some sections of Britain's Jewish community are 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.


http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1096735.html

I've thought about this issue for a long time and eventually the question I asked myself was "Supposing you are a Jewish kid who already suffers anti-Semitism from other kids and grown-ups and then your parents break it to you that the Jewish school you were looking forward to taking refuge in won't accept you because it does not consider you to be a Jew?"

What would you do? Have a nervous breakdown, jump out the top window? You would certainly feel like nothing.

[Mediocrates]

Haaretz calling this 'racist' is typically stupid Haaretznik. The issue is a religious one complicated by the state funding the school receives. Materially it's not any different from the US case where the Monsey Satmars erected Kiryat Joel 'public' school and then refused to build handicapped access or provide special education for seriously disabled Jewish children in their own community. They also lost their case. If you take money from the state you take it with all of the strings that the state attaches to it.

[maven]

Who has the right to force their view of on others? And at the expense of hurting children.

[bararallu]

Is the school partially funded by the government?

[Mediocrates]

yes it is and that is the core issue.

[maven]

bararallu: Is the school partially funded by the government?

yes it is and that is the core issue.Firstly let me agreee with Mediocrates that this has nothing to do with racism, it has to do with funding and blatant discrimination.

Only in regards to the setting of school policy is it a core issue.

In the relatively tiny Jewish community of the UK where school resources are scarce for Jews unlike the US and where Rabbis, Jewish children, schools and Synagogues are in constant danger of attack from Muslims and to a lesser degree anti-Semites, the more human aspect of the children themselves must be the major consideration. i.e. it's not just free-market economics operating but a duty of care for the children of the whole Jewish community.

Here the British government and courts are putting the spiritual and cultural needs of Jewish children per se first and the welfare of children is the core issue as far as they are concerned.

The insanity of the school in question is that it has Christian and Muslim pupils whose mothers were Jewish but will not accept Jewish children whose mothers were converts! I have no sympathy for them and hope the courts will deal with the school harshly.

Unlike in the US, London's Jewish schools look more like high security prisions with high electric fences, razorwire, multiple security cameras, often armed police presence, specific Jewish-only school busses (to protect children from attack), bomb-proof windows and doors, yet ways are still found to attack them. Photo shows a swastika carved into the enterance to a school grounds:
http://www.israpundit.com/2008/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/swastika-near-british-jewish-school1-150x150.jpg

(btw bararallu, state schools are normally entirely rather than partly funded by government in the UK. Most rich Jews send their children to Public and private schools like Eton and Harrow alongside royalty, aristocracy and the offspring of world rulers, there there is no anti-Semitism only merit. Most of those children go on to embrace secularism).

[bararallu]

If it's a private school (which it is not) they should make their own rules, and those rules can be exclusionary on completely arbitrary grounds. I BTW see correlates of what is going on in France, Turkey and Jerusalem in recent threads here. It is related phenomena. In modern society there absolutely should be a difference between state owned (full or partial) and private property. If a frum parking lot owner wants his lot closed on Shabbat in Jerusalem, all power to him. If a religious Muslim girl wants to attend a Muslim school in Muslim garb in France or Turkey thats up to her, albeit not if she is forced. Private means Private. And the state should be secular. Every state, just for ethical reasons. Otherwise we will inherit a bag of hurt that keeps on hurting.

[maven]

If it's a private school (which it is not) they should make their own rules, and those rules can be exclusionary on completely arbitrary grounds. I BTW see correlates of what is going on in France, Turkey and Jerusalem in recent threads here. It is related phenomena. In modern society there absolutely should be a difference between state owned (full or partial) and private property. If a frum parking lot owner wants his lot closed on Shabbat in Jerusalem, all power to him. If a religious Muslim girl wants to attend a Muslim school in Muslim garb in France or Turkey thats up to her, albeit not if she is forced. Private means Private. And the state should be secular. Every state, just for ethical reasons. Otherwise we will inherit a bag of hurt that keeps on hurting.If it's a privately funded school anywhare in Europe including France, then they can do what they like as long as the school teaches the '''basic national curriculum' which simply means that the school gives the kids a balanced education rather than becoming a madrassa. I think I read that there are over a hundred Muslim schools, private and state in England.

If it is a state-funded institution, especially as in Europe where state education is free, then in such schools they have to accept state rules and not turn up in burquas or smoke pot in the schoolyard (a Rastafarian relegious duty).

France is a particular case as seperation of church and state is integral to the constitution and millions of French people died in the revolution to achieve that.

Britain is very odd, muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Jews may wear relegious symbols including bangles, hijab and a necklace with a small star of David but christians are not allowed to wear a cruscifix. But some schools are more liberal and this one allowed a girl to wear a crusafix on a pin (a lethal danger to my mind for an eight year old child):

CROSS BAN FOR CHURCH SCHOOLGIRL
Thursday July 2,2009
By Emily Fox

A CHURCH of England school has ordered a pupil to remove her necklace with a cross even though children of other faiths can wear religious jewellery.
Lauren Grimshaw-Brown, eight, was told by St Peter’s School in Chorley, Lancs, to wear a brooch instead on safety grounds.
Her furious mother Laina, 27, says the pin would be more risky.
She added: “A letter said that if she had been a Sikh she would be allowed to wear bangles.
“I’ve got no problem with any other religion wearing bangles but why can’t my daughter wear a necklace with a cross?
“After all, it’s a church-led school.

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/111303/Cross-ban-for-church-schoolgirl

[Hisardut]

proof even jews are

[Mediocrates]

What has any of this to do with education or the results of education?

[savvy]

This is why I am opposed to big government. They promise to take care of you and then invade your life.

[Mason]

If it's funded by the state, they should be forced to accept people regardless of religion or race. If they were private, they should be able to exclude anyone they want.

Simple.

[Aviva]

proof even jews are

This ruling has nothing to do with racism; it's about the conflict between Orthodox and non-Orthodox conversions. The "race" of the mother is surely irrelevant; halachic Jewish status is the issue in question, an issue that badly needs to be resolved somehow for the good of all the Jewish community.

However, my first thought when I read this story is that surely the parents of the child would have been aware of the halachic status of their children when they decided on a Conservative/Masorti conversion for the mother. JFS is a good quality school, much better than local schools and I'm sure they'd want their child to go there. But attacking the wider Jewish community to achieve that goal is something I find reprehensible. If a Jewish school was important to them, I don't see why they didn't make an effort to have an Orthodox conversion.

Having said all that, JFS is not a "religious" school as far as I'm aware, in comparison to other Jewish schools, so it's entry policy was bound to cause problems like this. They should have been more forward thinking.

[maven]

How typically politically correct of the modern British mindset to call this 'racist' which is absurd. It is a clear case of discrimination and inter-relegious sectarianism.

A school which after taking government money accepts Muslim and Christian children because their mothers converted from Judaism but refuses to accept Jewish children whose mothers converted to Judaism should be sanctioned by the authorities and condemned within the wider Jewish community.

Such a degree of spite from orthodox to to non-orthodox Jews which ends in Jewish children losing places (in a country of 80 million people with only a handful of Jewish schools) to Muslims, takes the notion of "My enemy's enemy is my friend" to absurd lenghts.

If I were the board of governors I would be delighted to have the opportunity to give these liberal kids the opportunity to be exposed to so many beautiful orthodox values and greater prepare themselves for a future which is not always kind and often lonely for Jews of any background. Great especially to have Muslim kids but Jewish kids places in a Jewish school should come first.

Aviva, many are denied orthodox conversions in the sense that these conversions may not be recognized in Israel and maybe being orthodox is too much of a commitment for everybody to make. Some of the parents may be secular; all the more need to give these kids the knowledge and understanding that may give them the future choice to become orthodox.

[Mediocrates]

Yes well never let it be said that the Brits ever miss an opportunity to call the Jews 'racist'. And I'm sure the school thought they were being the most egalitarian of all, what with accepting non Jews in the first place. Then they point to whom they consider heterodox and pronounce themselves "See here, we allow Muslims and such, we're just keeping our own house in order..."

Which in a sad ironic way is exactly how all the Conservative and Reform Jews treat the Orthodox here in the states.