Posted on 11/12/2009 11:38:43 AM PST by Pope Pius XII
A British appeals court has ruled that a Jewish school unlawfully discriminated against an applicant who was not a Jew according to the British chief rabbi’s definition of Judaism. The applicant is the son of a Jewish father and a mother who converted at a Reformed synagogue; according to Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a child of a mother who converted to Judaism is Jewish only if the mother converted at an Orthodox synagogue.
Whether this definition of Judaism is “benign or malignant, theological or supremacist … the requirement that if a pupil is to qualify for admission his mother must be Jewish, whether by descent or conversion, is a test of ethnicity which contravenes the Race Relations Act,” the court ruled.
So Islamic Swine must be admitted too?
ML/NJ
Don’t think this can’t happen to the Catholic Church when a court decides that the Church is being “discriminatory” in defining who’s Catholic and who isn’t.
Cretins.
From the NYT link: “Britain has nearly 7,000 publicly financed religious schools, representing Judaism as well as the Church of England, Catholicism and Islam, among others. Under a 2006 law, the schools can in busy years give preference to applicants within their own faiths, using criteria laid down by a designated religious authority.”
So it is a publicly funded school, but the 2006 law appeared to allow them to set criteria. Or not, obviously. Note to religious schools: Avoid public money at all costs.
No kidding. Accept public funding, accept public control.
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