How can they "enjoy being Jewish" when they are not?
Twelve
years ago, Lord Jakobovits, may he rest in peace, appointed Michael Philips to
chair
Immanuel
College in Bushey. Against a backdrop of
much scepticism at the time, that was a real success story, with hundred of
kids being churned out with a sound Jewish and secular education and making
real successes of their lives.
More
recently, Philips has taken over the chair of JCoSS, a forty million pound
project for a six-form entry school in Barnet, due to open in three years. In
speaking to the Jewish Chronicle recently, Philips rightly declared, "every
Jewish child is entitled to a Jewish education...All Jewish children are
entitled to a Jewish education, no matter what their background.” I
applaud his forceful affirmation of a basic truism and sincerely hope that
everyone will do their very best to assure its implementation.
Unfortunately,
though, he proceeded to negate his own premise, turning it into an oxymoron, by
thereafter identifying as Jewish even those who "halachically are not
Jewish!" You can't have it both ways. Either they are Jewish or they are
not.
To be
sure, he is quite right in saying that the community cannot stop some Jews
marrying non-Jews. A dishonest fuddling of the issues by pretending that
something is that which it is not, will not help the situation but aggravate
it. How can they "enjoy being Jewish" when they are not? If they
"want their children to be brought up as Jews" they would first have
to make them Jewish by proper conversion.
Philips
says that “It makes me happy to think that they will be socialising with Jewish
boys and girls. It has an impact on their family and can only benefit them.” He
may be very happy, yet does not consider the potential of tragic consequences.
Socialising with Jewish boys and girls more than likely will lead to
building relationships under the false assumption that both are Jewish,
only to discover later on that one of them is not. Needless to say this will
prove extremely traumatic for both (and their families). Just read the current
cover-story of the JTA Global News Service how vexing this problem has become
even for the more lax conservative (masorti) movement, let alone for the
orthodox.
In plain English, his proposal is fraudulent, and will only aggravate
a most serious problem. I think, if Lord Jakobovitz were aware, he
wouldn’t be resting in too much peace!
