No True...

[hoverFrog]

...Jew

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8325901.stm

Is being a Jew a matter of bloodline or religious practice? The UK's new Supreme Court is debating the subject this week, in a case that could have a wider impact on faith schools, says Tim Whewell.

"Judaism differs fundamentally from all other faiths," says Yitzchak Schochet, rabbi of an Orthodox congregation in London. "Regardless of one's observance level, if one is born a Jew it doesn't matter if they keep absolutely nothing.

Then there's the question of what constitutes "membership" of a religion. For Catholics, for example, baptism is usually the mark of membership and in some Catholic dioceses baptism, regardless of observance, is the main criterion for admission to Catholic schools....But some lawyers say baptism, usually performed when a child is just a few weeks old, isn't proof of the parents' current faith and therefore may be too broad a definition to be legal as a schools admissions criterion.

All a bit of a palaver if you ask me but it does raise some interesting questions. If a Jew is a child of a Jewish mother then can they ever leave the faith? Can a Catholic who has been baptised as a child leave Catholicism or are they a catholic forever? Could a Jew convert to Catholicism and remain a Jew?

Do theists think that God cares which faith you subscribe to or is he more interested in how you act? For atheists who left a faith do you think of yourself as a member of that religion still? Does your family consider you a member even though you have rejected the idea of gods? For any converts do you consider yourself to be straddling two (or more) faiths or has your conversion nullified any former membership completely? What is it that makes a person a member of a particular religion and isn't the whole thing really a kind of legalism?

[Jasen777]

For atheists who left a faith do you think of yourself as a member of that religion still?

Nope. Protestantism (especially American varieties) have this problem much less that Catholicism and especially Judaism (which suffers from a religion/ethnicity conflation).

[Sackbut]

Ah, the old "who is a Jew" question. Scholars of Judaism wrestle with that one a lot, along with "who is a good Jew".

Being Jewish is, in a sense, like being Polish or being Swedish, in that it's partly an ethnic classification, sort of, even though there are many ethnicities involved. In the sense that you don't lose your ethnic background, you don't lose your Jewishness. Jewish people do claim people of other religions as part of their "tribe" if the other person was born a Jew, even if the mother practiced some other religion, and even if the person in question is unaware of his or her Jewish background.

So, if a Jewish person practices some other religion, what's going on? He's left the faith, but he's still a Jew.

This kind of thing is why I say I'm "of Jewish background" rather than "Jewish". People, Jew and non-Jew alike, assume you practice the religion, even though you don't have to do so in order to maintain the classification, "officially".

[Ulrich]

Can a Catholic who has been baptised as a child leave Catholicism or are they a catholic forever?

According to the German Wikipedia article on religious disaffiliation, "the Catholic church knows no resignation from the communion as baptism is irrevocable and the church considers itself the community of the baptised. (...) The declaration of resignation causes excommunication, i.e. not expulsion from the church, but the loss of certain membership rights as a coercive penalty."

See also here. The Vatican's ruling quoted there puts it like this:

It remains clear, in any event, that the sacramental bond of belonging to the Body of Christ that is the Church, conferred by the baptismal character, is an ontological and permanent bond which is not lost by reason of any act or fact of defection.

Personally, I don't care. I was baptised into the Catholic church as a baby, but I certainly do not consider myself a Catholic anymore.

[Sackbut]

Response article from the Jerusalem Post

Some pertinent quotes:

The Jews are first and foremost a people and only secondarily a faith. We were the children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob before we received the Torah at Mount Sinai and began practicing Judaism's tenets. Peoplehood comes first, and is completely independent of any kind of religious affirmation. Jewishness is not something that can be lost, and not something that can be renounced.

In this sense Judaism is radically different from Christianity, which is a conscious act of affirmation. While there cannot be atheist Christians, there are plenty of atheist Jews.

I think the author's argument is essentially valid only to the extent he views Jewish people as a people. Are there any equivalent schools in England? Schools for Turkish people, or German people, or Chinese people, or Moroccan people, or other ethic groups, in which they are given a standard eduction while they also learn about their ethnic culture and history? Any such school might in theory restrict attendance based on ethnicity, and so could be accused of the same kind of discrimination as the Jewish school; are they?

However, the author misses the big point that Judaism is in fact a faith as well as an ethnicity. Where are people to go if they converted to Judaism and wish a Jewish faith education for their children?

And he has a huge omission in his comment about there being atheist Jews. There are also Christian Jews, and Muslim Jews, and Buddhist Jews. Is this school for "Jewish people" supposed to be accepting of them as well? Where are they to learn about the "people" aspect of being Jewish, without the "faith" aspect intruding on their choices?

They can't have it both ways. They can't demand to be treated as an ethnicity (or a "people") one day and a faith the next.

The author is missing the point of the court ruling, too. The court is not deciding who is a Jew, but rather saying that a Jewish faith school cannot engage in discrimination on anything other than faith.