Mountain Minyan המנין בהרים

There was a very brief article in The Forward and another here in Ha’aretz, but you’re much better reading this more detailed article in The Guardian. There is a companion opinion piece here.

I’m fairly sure I know how this will play. There will be a lot of commentary on it criticizing it because, well, it’s the UK. Even though Jews have lived securely and freely in the UK for a very long time, the history of the British Mandate hangs in the air. Plus, there’s no mistaking the rhetorical war by the more right-wing elements of American Jewry and in Israel against each and every European country these days—some of it deserved, some of it not. They will say that this decision is oppressive because it forces a non-Jewish definition of Jewishness on Jews.

If that’s what it were, those comments would have a basis in fact. But there are a few details that might be missed here. First, this is not just a private school. It is a quasi-public school. It is a state-funded “faith school” in question here. Whether that changes your mind or not, it should at least be a relevant fact, and it is not in The Forward’s article. To be fair, none of the articles quote extensively from or link to the actual court decision, which is from the new Supreme Court of the UK, which just started in October as a replacement for the House of Lords.

The decision is here: Decision. [pdf] Please read it for yourself and tell me if you think it is free of religious concern.

All it says is that the Orthodox chief rabbinate has no monopoly on the determination of Jewish status for purposes of a state-funded school. This is not that different than the law in Israel, where the secular government recognizes a broader view of Jewish status for purposes of the Law of Return, even if the chief rabbinate has authority over other status issues. But, no doubt, this policy will be criticized even though, on the merits, its virtually identical to what Israel itself does because it’s the UK doing it.

To repeat: this is not allowing Muslims in a private Jewish school. It is allowing a religious Jewish boy, born of a Jewish mother who converted to attend a state-funded school that has the freedom to teach Torah values notwithstanding its state funding. What is even more compelling to me is that the new test for admission will actually be based on religious observance tests instead of simply parentage:

Concern has been expressed that the majority decision will compel Jewish faith schools to admit children whom the Jewish religion does not recognise as being Jewish, that is children who are not descended from Jews by the maternal line. It is not clear that this is so. As a result of the decision of the Court of Appeal the JFS has published a new admission policy for admission in September 2010. This applies a test of religious practice, including “synagogue attendance, Jewish education and/or family communal activity”.

(R v Governing Body of JFS [2009] UKSC 15, p. 18.) Tell me what’s more important to creating an environment of Torah values? The dunce child of an accidental Jew or the observant child of a Jew by choice.

Oh and just in case you have to go there, the conversion was not a whatever-pejorative-term-you-want-to-apply-to-it Reform conversion. It was a Masorti, and therefore halakhic, conversion. It is also not ordering the Orthodox rabbinate to recognize the child as a Jew, or ordering them to change their standards for conversion.
For those of you used to the shallow logic, cherry-picking of facts, and transparent results-based thinking of so many American court opinions, I think you’ll find the UK Supreme Court’s opinion refreshing. Also, on the alleged narrowness of the decision, Rabbi Romain:

It is rather distasteful that the JFS has been defended by a press release claiming the supreme court decision was by “the narrowest of margins” ie 5-4. This is spin. In reality, five judges found it was guilty direct discrimination, two of indirect discrimination and two of no discrimination.

Legally you cannot have both direct and indirect discrimination simultaneously, hence the 5-4 vote, but morally you could say that it was a 7-2 verdict declaring that JFS was guilty of discrimination in one form or another.

UPDATE:

Heeb has an abortion of a take here. I guess they aren’t interested in Judaism.

The New York Times has a report here. It erroneously reports—or at least misleadingly—states that the woman in question’s conversion was “progressive.” I think that usually means Reform to most people. Here, the conversion was Masorti, which is something in between Conservative and Modern Orthodox in terms of the US. In other words, it was a halakhic conversion.