Church and State in England: Who is a Jew?

Oy; you think we have problems keeping church and state separate? What with the annual December dilemma, with crèche scenes on public property declared constitutionally protected if part of an exhibit featuring Santa and reindeer, what with rabbis lighting Chanukah menorahs in the State House? In Britain, takah, they have problems beyond your wildest fears. The government in the guise of its newly established Supreme Court, has taken onto itself the responsibility of defining who is a Jew. Yes, I’m talking about Gentile judges in England, not Haredi rabbis in Israel.

The case, which was decided a couple of months ago in mid-December (your columnist is sometimes a bit slow on the uptake) concerned a boy called “M” in court papers who was denied admission to a Jewish school. “M” comes from an observant family where the father is Jewish and the mother a convert to Judaism through the Reform movement. (In Britain Reform roughly equates to Conservative, while Liberal means Reform as in America.) He applied to the state-supported Jews’ Free School founded in 1732 but was rejected on the grounds that he was not Jewish according to Orthodox halachah, since his mother had been converted by a non-Orthodox rabbi.

So the boy’s parents sued, arguing that the school had discriminated against him. The family lost, but the ruling was overturned by the Court of Appeals. Ultimately the case reached Britain’s Supreme Court, which ratified the Appeals Court decision in a 5-4 ruling, saying that basing school admission on whether one’s mother is Jewish is by definition discriminatory and in violation of the 1976 Race Relations Act.

Hurrah for the Liberals, eh? Well, not quite. The Modern Orthodox establishment (it’s called the United Synagogue) and a great many liberals are deeply concerned. It’s bad enough that the school, a Jewish institution had defined “M” as not being Jewish, but now the government was deciding who was and who wasn’t. There’s a very dangerous precedent for this. Actually there are several dangerous precedents. I’m thinking of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, both of which were in the business of defining who was a Jew—but not for any particular Jew’s advantage as in this case, I might add.

The decision has left British Jewry divided. Not only did the decision open up the possibility that non-Jews could qualify for admission, but that the government, rather than Jewish religious authorities, can determine who is Jewish in Britain.

Another problem: Jewish groups in Britain remain concerned that the ruling, might stigmatize Judaism as a discriminatory religion anytime schools give preference to those who are Jewish according to Jewish law. However, the president of the court, Nicholas Phillips, said in announcing the verdict that it did not mean that those responsible for the school’s admissions policy had acted in a way that was “racist as that word is generally understood.” Very comforting. Jews could now be called racists of a different stripe.

So now the Orthodox want to fight the ruling, the liberals like what the ruling says, but not the fact that there was a ruling. The Jews’ Free School and other state-funded Jewish schools have made some major adjustments to their admissions criteria. The criteria now focus on requiring applicants to demonstrate participation in faith-based activities, such as synagogue attendance -- something the Chief Rabbi characterized as “a Christian solution for a Jewish school.”

And why do British Jews face the problem of the government defining who and what they are? Because in Britain there is no separation between religion and the state. The Anglican Church is official but so as not to be discriminatory, others are also allowed state funding. But the piper has to be paid, or, to mix my clichés he who holds the purse strings calls the tune. In the case of “M” the Orthodox establishment which takes state money disenfranchised a boy whose family is religiously observant. Foolish school; had it not, the state would not have had the opportunity to declare who is a Jew. The Haredi don’t have this problem. No governmental court is going to define who can attend their schools because they don’t accept funding from the government. Smart Haredi; they didn’t go for the bait which has snared the others. Now if only they’d stop lighting Chanukah menorahs at the State House.

Anti-Semitism flares in Greece

The worst-kept secret in literature is that Homer the Greek depicted the Trojans as innocent victims of circumstance in general and of Greek blood lust in particular. The invading Greeks are described as barbarians while Troy is seen as a utopia. It has broad streets, wise rulers, industrious women, and of course Hector and Andromache, the noblest of the noble.

Yet we think of the Greeks positively. We admire the Parthenon and other architectural treasures; we are impressed with its sculpture, we live longer because it was a Greek who opened the world’s eyes to the fact that disease is the result of natural, not supernatural causes. Ours is a government based on the writings of Plato (not “The Republic” which manages to blend the worst elements of fascism and communism, but his “Laws” and his “Statesman”). Our geometry is Euclidian of Pythagorean elements thrown in. And yet. And yet even the greatest of Greek cities Athens built the Parthenon with money stolen from its reluctant allies. Athens thought nothing of destroying a neutral city because it refused to become its ally (read “slave”) and Athens couldn’t take the critiques of Socrates and so had him executed. The glory that was Greece is a bit tarnished, both in literature and in history.

And now again.

For a long time there was little anti-Semitism in Greece. Yes, there were crazy right-wingers there, but Nazism has a bad name in most countries the Germans occupied. However, with the coming of the Gaza war last year politicians and pundits on both the left and right of the political spectrum have been spewing anti-Semitic remarks. And then the arsons and desecrations started.

On the island of Crete the Etz Hayim synagogue was torched, saved, for a while, by two Albanians and a Palestinian immigrant who lived across the street and alerted the fire brigade. But the building was saved only for a while. A second fire was more successful, and while the first did not evoke condemnation by the Greek government, the second one did. “The attack on the Etz Hayyim Synagogue not only constitutes an attack on one of the remaining Jewish monuments in the island of Crete, but also an attack against the history and the cultural heritage of our homeland, Greece,” Prime Minister George Papandreou wrote to the Anti-Defamation-League. “The Government, I personally as well as the entire Greek nation, condemn this abominable act in the strongest possible terms.” Well, maybe he does, but the entire Greek nation seems to be of two minds. A well know anti-Semite, Kostas Plevris wrote a 1,400 page book condemning Jews. He was brought to trial by the Greek chapter of the Helsinki Human Rights Monitor and the Anti-Nazi initiative. And after a long trial was found innocent of incitement to violence against Jews. Even the prosecutor referred to his screed “Jews: The Whole Truth.” as “a scientific work.”

In 2009 the Jewish cemetery of Ioannina was vandalized four times. Greaves and a Holocaust memorial were destroyed and body parts were unearthed. A high-ranking police officer caught in the cemetery immediately after one of the incidents was not questioned by authorities. Neither the mayor, the governor nor the highest-ranking priest in the city condemned the outrage.

George Karatzaferis, the leader of the far-right political party LAOS wrote an article in his weekly newspaper calling the Jews “Christ killers” and saying that the “blood of the Jews stinks.” Left-wing leaders refused to condemn the anti-Semitic incidents or even join Greece’s commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day in late January. “There are no good Jews,” Jimmy Panousis, a well-known liberal radio personality said on his show. “Jews are pigs and murderers, but fortunately their days are numbered.”

The newspaper Avriani, blames American Jews for causing the global economic crisis, warning that American Jews were plotting to set off World War III. Piraeus Serafim of the Greek Orthodox Church warned of “Zionist monsters with sharp claws.” Salonica Anthimos, another church official known for his anti-Jewish statements said Jews were being punished for killing Christ.

A whole nation cannot be condemned for the rantings of a few. But let’s keep an eye on Greece, whose glory days are long gone, but whose ancestors even then were not above a massacre of innocents.