Source: www.nytimes.com
[HPI note: This law ruling will possibly affect future decisions on who is, and is not, a Hindu in UK law.]
LONDON, ENGLAND, December 17, 2009: Britain’s Supreme Court declared Wednesday that it was illegal for a Jewish school that favors Jewish applicants to base its admissions policy on a classic test of Jewishness — whether one’s mother is Jewish. “One thing is clear about the matrilineal test; it is a test of ethnic origin,” Lord Phillips, president of the court, said in his majority opinion. Under the law, he said, “by definition, discrimination that is based upon that test is discrimination on racial grounds.”
The decision, by Britain’s highest court, brings an end to a case that has exposed deep divisions among Britain’s 300,000 Jews and forced the judiciary to consider an ancient question at the heart of Judaism: Who is a Jew?
The case concerns the efforts of a 12-year-old boy, known as M in court papers, to be admitted to J.F.S., formerly the Jews’ Free School, one of Britain’s best-performing Jewish secondary schools. Although it is financed by the state, J.F.S., in North London, is allowed by law to give preference to Jewish applicants.
But its definition of Jewishness is the Orthodox one, set by the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. Though M is an observant Jew whose father is Jewish and whose mother is a Jewish convert, he is not considered a Jew by the school because his mother converted in a progressive, not Orthodox, synagogue.
“The ruling represents a definitive end to six decades of exclusion of children who are devout in their Jewish faith, but considered by some to be not quite Jewish enough to enjoy the benefits of their community’s leading faith school,” John Halford, a lawyer for M, said in a statement.