Schwartz: Sabotaging the secular state
A case now standing before the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom bears with it the future of Britain’s relationship with its Jewish community, and the court has no attractive options.
The suit involves a religiously observant Jewish boy, M., who has been denied admission to the Jews’ Free School in London, on the grounds that he is not Jewish. And why is he not Jewish? Because, argues the school, his mother isn’t Jewish. His mother isn’t Jewish because she converted to Judaism under the aegis of the liberal Reform movement, so her conversion has not been recognized as valid by the...
The ending was a bit abrupt for my tastes, but this is an insightful column. Well done!
Ah...the trials and tribulations of believing in invisible sky gods.
I supported the school's stance on admissions till I read that it was state funded. If you do not want the state to mess with your admission policies, do not take money from the state. Simple.
@#4,
Riiiiight, because accepting State Funds should be dependent upon cowtowing to all of the delightful whims of secular culture. The State should be religiously neutral, not militantly secular and atheist.
Re #5
Religious neutrality. Doesn't this mean that the position of the state is "there is no (invisible sky god)(pink leprechans)(alien vortexes)(jedi warriers)(great pumpkins)(an infinity of other such literal nonsense) until proven otherwise?" Asking for arguments in favor of such hypothetical entities before state recognition is not being "militant".
Does the State get to decide what "love" is?
There is more to life than what we can prove in a laboratory.
Why should positivism be the dogma of our government?
"Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness" Where is the scientific proof for such things?
The Founding Fathers would laugh at your narrow mind.
#4, in an ideal world, the state would not fund any school (atheist or religious), so this would not be an issue. But given that the state does in fact fund schools, I have to agree with #5, the state should be neutral, not militantly secular.
I'd add another incongruity - once you make racial definitions of citizenship to a group out of bounds, there is no basis for the citizenship tests given across the US and Europe to immigrants but not to natural born citizens. Why should being born into a group privilege a person over someone who had the misfortune not to be? Shouldn't deciding to "be" an American - or Jew - be sufficient?
Yet another inconsistency of the secular state - as usual in these sorts of matters, it's only racist when the other guy is doing it.
The truth is that self-definition on a belief-based or objective intellectual level is extremely difficult, and so societies often adopt ethnic guidelines as a neutral - and sometimes arbitrary - arbiter. If such definition is fair game for the secular state in its own matters of citizenship, surely it should be for faiths groups and their sects.
This is apt.
Time for you to read some Strauss.