Leading Article: Jewish question

It was unfair that the Jewish Free School in north London refused to admit a 12-year-old boy on the grounds that his mother was not Jewish by descent and that she had not converted to Judaism in a way in which the Chief Rabbi approved. The Appeal Court saidthis was racially discriminatory because it was based on whether his mother was Jewish. That ruling is now presumably the end of the matter.

It will mean that the Jewish Free School will have to rewrite its admission procedures to ensure that it no longer turns away children who are practising Jews but who don't meet the requirements of the Chief Rabbi's United Synagogue. The mother of the boy in question had converted through the Progressive Judaism Movement. Her offspring should not have suffered as a result.