British court rules Judaism is racist

Haaretz

Jewish schools are guilty of racial discrimination if they reject children on the grounds of their parentage, a British court has ruled.

In a decision that has shocked the country's 300,000-strong Jewish community, the Court of Appeal held that ongoing personal acts of faith, rather than birth or conversion, must define who is a Jew.

In doing so, the court overturned an earlier high court judgment upholding the decision of the JFS in London (the oldest and largest Jewish school in Britain) to deny a boy admission because it did not recognize his mother?s conversion.

The three judges, one of them Jewish, ruled that any selection criteria that gives ethnic priority to a Jew is showing racial discrimination. They cited the Race Relations Act 1976, which was introduced to prevent discrimination on the grounds of race.

The ruling means that Jewish schools of any denomination, whether privately or state funded, will be barred from giving priority to children who are born Jewish or who convert, and instead must consider how the children and their families practice their Judaism.

The move throws into disarray the admissions arrangements for Britain's 97 Orthodox schools and may force them to introduce "faith tests" - like church schools, which require fortnightly attendance at Sunday services. Such a radical intervention - unprecedented since the time of Oliver Cromwell - calls into question the relationship between church (or synagogue) and state. [...]