Bad night.

I'm sorry.

I'm not sure I agree about Orthodox views of other Jews (if I had to define myself by denomination, I'd say I'm Conservative, but I'm usually more comfortable at an independent minyan), but I don't think this is an issue of discrimination against the Orthodox. I read the decision of the lower court, and it quoted a Reform rabbi saying that the admissions policy of the school was way too narrow, but that it would be ridiculous to impose a test of Jewish practice, because that's not how Judaism has ever been defined by anyone.

What seems like a reasonable solution to me, and what several of the Reform and Liberal rabbis suggested, was saying that a kid is Jewish for the purposes of the school if there is some mainstream denomination that recognizes the kid as Jewish. The law says that the religious authorities have the right to decide who qualifies as a member of that religion. This started out as a fight about which religious authorities would have that right when it came to this school, but it ended up with the right to decide who is Jewish being taken away from the Jewish community altogether. The test that they now have to use looks a lot like the policies at various Christian schools, but looks nothing at all like anything that has ever been used by any Jewish denomination.

The Reform rabbi quoted:

But that is an internal matter for the Jewish community. We would not want the law of the land to question the right of the OCR to define Jewish identity the way that it does. We do not think it is wise or right for the State to get involved. In any event, this has nothing to do with race or racism.

What would be absolutely ridiculous and unacceptable would be to require synagogue attendance or a defined level of religious practice …

We would be equally outraged – that is, equally with Orthodox Judaism – if a 'Christian' model of 'Church' membership and attendance were imposed. We would advise very strongly against government or legal intervention in the admissions criteria at JFS – even though our view of the needs of the Jewish world and our outlook on the best strategy to maintain and develop Jewish life is very different. In our view, the OCR policy with regard to admission to JFS is strategically wrong, 'politically' motivated, not in the interests either of the community or the family concerned and unjust. But we would not want the courts or the government to intervene or adjudicate, certainly not on grounds of racial discrimination.

But again it is only policy for the schools, which have always admitted non-Jews if there is room. It is not policy for synagogues.

But it's a Jewish school, and the law says that the decision about who qualifies as Jewish should be made by a Jewish religious authority. I think the school should have accepted these kids as Jewish, because the Liberal and Reform and Masorti movements accept them as Jewish, and a school that's supposed to be for the Jewish community should actually be for the Jewish community and not just for the Orthodox. But that's exactly why I don't like this decision -- it's not just taking it out of the hands of the Orthodox, it's taking it out of the hands of the Jewish community entirely.

Oh msbelle, I'm sorry about the bad night. I'm on AIM if you need to vent or can vent.

I'm slowly eating my way through the freezer. It's not as much fun as one might imagine. But tonight is fettucine alfredo, which is kind of awesome.

One of the other families involved in the case is one where the mother converted in Israel and the Israeli rabbinate still recognizes her conversion as valid, but the London rabbis don't.

You know, as a general rule, I would say that no particular group of religious authorities should overrule another if not defined by the religion, but I think that the rabbis in ISRAEL have a little more cred that an english rabbi.

Basically what I'm trying to say is, every denomination defines a Jew as someone who is either Jewish by birth or by conversion. They disagree on what is meant by "by birth" or "by conversion," but they agree that those are the two general ways that someone can be Jewish. This test -- synagogue attendance, keeping kosher, volunteering with a Jewish communal group, attending a Jewish primary school -- ignores all of that completely. And it's also biased toward the Orthodox, because some of the other denominations don't believe that the rules of kashrut are binding, so it's asking them to prove that they are Jewish by doing something that they don't believe is a requirement of Judaism.

You know, as a general rule, I would say that no particular group of religious authorities should overrule another if not defined by the religion, but I think that the rabbis in ISRAEL have a little more cred that an english rabbi.

General precedent is that rabbis in one place can question the validity of conversions by rabbis somewhere else. What this used to mean was that, every once in a while, you'd end up with somebody who wasn't considered Jewish in one town with really particular rabbis, but was considered Jewish everywhere else. It really didn't happen with any frequency until the past decade or two, and a whole lot of it is because of politics and infighting among the rabbinate -- rabbis trying to discredit other rabbis by "proving" that they performed an invalid conversion.