[doctorzlo]

Is the school partially funded by the government?

[MannoFr]

yes it is and that is the core issue.

[Raj_Copi_Jin]

If it's a private school (which it is not) they should make their own rules, and those rules can be exclusionary on completely arbitrary grounds. I BTW see correlates of what is going on in France, Turkey and Jerusalem in recent threads here. It is related phenomena. In modern society there absolutely should be a difference between state owned (full or partial) and private property. If a frum parking lot owner wants his lot closed on Shabbat in Jerusalem, all power to him. If a religious Muslim girl wants to attend a Muslim school in Muslim garb in France or Turkey thats up to her, albeit not if she is forced. Private means Private. And the state should be secular. Every state, just for ethical reasons. Otherwise we will inherit a bag of hurt that keeps on hurting.

[Big A]

What has any of this to do with education or the results of education?

[Slonopotam845]

Haaretz calling this 'racist' is typically stupid Haaretznik. The issue is a religious one complicated by the state funding the school receives. Materially it's not any different from the US case where the Monsey Satmars erected Kiryat Joel 'public' school and then refused to build handicapped access or provide special education for seriously disabled Jewish children in their own community. They also lost their case. If you take money from the state you take it with all of the strings that the state attaches to it.

[Lillie_Steins]

proof even jews are

This ruling has nothing to do with racism; it's about the conflict between Orthodox and non-Orthodox conversions. The "race" of the mother is surely irrelevant; halachic Jewish status is the issue in question, an issue that badly needs to be resolved somehow for the good of all the Jewish community.

However, my first thought when I read this story is that surely the parents of the child would have been aware of the halachic status of their children when they decided on a Conservative/Masorti conversion for the mother. JFS is a good quality school, much better than local schools and I'm sure they'd want their child to go there. But attacking the wider Jewish community to achieve that goal is something I find reprehensible. If a Jewish school was important to them, I don't see why they didn't make an effort to have an Orthodox conversion.

Having said all that, JFS is not a "religious" school as far as I'm aware, in comparison to other Jewish schools, so it's entry policy was bound to cause problems like this. They should have been more forward thinking.

[Peptobismol]

Yes well never let it be said that the Brits ever miss an opportunity to call the Jews 'racist'. And I'm sure the school thought they were being the most egalitarian of all, what with accepting non Jews in the first place. Then they point to whom they consider heterodox and pronounce themselves "See here, we allow Muslims and such, we're just keeping our own house in order..."

Which in a sad ironic way is exactly how all the Conservative and Reform Jews treat the Orthodox here in the states.