To tie in with your last post, at least one man made a half-decent fist of it... ;)

Thank you, Julia, for not hyphenating "tie in".

It's a religious school. How, exactly, is it the government's business?

It's the Government's business if they refuse entry on grounds of race. I think it's abundantly clear that that hasn't happened here. But there has always been some blurring between and conflation of Judaism and Jewry, and that blurriness has now ben exploited by the legal system in order to grab a little bit more power. Frankly, in retrospect, it's amazing it took so long.

To be fair, the action was brought by a Jewish family, who'll have only their own idiot selves to blame when this legal precedent bites them in the arse one day.

I've never understood the attachement of the race card to matters Jewish or Muslim. Anyone can be a Jew or a Muslim regardless of race or nationality. If anything it is sectarianism and that of the worst kind, between two branches of the same religion.

I am of Jewish descent, albeit four generations ago and I have never considered myself as anything other than English.

"It's the Government's business if they refuse entry on grounds of race."

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree about that.

Sorry, misunderstood you, Prof. Laws regarding religious schools are rather complicated in the UK (for reasons related to the fallout from the Civil War — yes, still, today). I know you're American, so thought you were asking a question about what the law actually says on these matters over here.

I didn't say it should be the Government's business. I said it is.

Henry,

> I've never understood the attachement of the race card to matters Jewish or Muslim. Anyone can be a Jew or a Muslim regardless of race or nationality.

Muslim, yes. Jewish, no. There is a Jewish race and there is a Jewish religion, with a lot of overlap. Different branches of the religion have different views on whether you can join up without the right ancestry.

Course, in this case, the school clearly don't give a damn about the boy's ancestry, which is why the court are wrong.

Have to disagree with you here S2. The Bible says that Abraham was the father of both Islam and Judaism (via Ishmael and Isaac), but at an anthropological level these are tribal divisions not necessarily racial divisions. I certainly do not believe that the Jews can class themselves as a separate racial group in the same way that Caucasians, Asians, and Africans are separate racial groups. If you are a Jew, it is because of your religion = although I have to qualify this by saying that I never had the benefit of attending schule.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the clarification.

Henry,

You're overestimating the extent to which "race" is properly defined. I'm not one of those people who think that because science has yet to come up with a neat definition of race, there can therefore be no such thing. But you seem to be using quite a strong definition which doesn't in fact exist.

> I certainly do not believe that the Jews can class themselves as a separate racial group in the same way that Caucasians, Asians, and Africans are separate racial groups.

Absent the technical definition which does not yet exist, the reason white people, Asians, and Africans are separate racial groups is because of their ability to say so. Jews have that same ability.

This is all beside the point, to be honest, as what we're talking about here is whether Jews get covered by British racial discrimination legislation. I don't think "Oh, but we discriminated against him on tribal grounds, not racial ones" is ever likely to work as a defence in court.

As an aside, I hate the word "Caucasian". I've never been anywhere near the Caucasus in my life: from there is not what I am.

"As an aside, I hate the word "Caucasian". I've never been anywhere near the Caucasus in my life: from there is not what I am."

Precisely. These "racial" definitions are anthropological. Whatever we call ourselves - Celtic, Anglo Saxon, Gallic etc are tribal definitions and English, Scottish, Irish merely national identities.

I still maintain that a Jew is someone who is an adherent of the Jewish religion and as the Jewry is made up of people from all nations cannot under any definition be classed as a separate racial group.

Jewry is made up of people of all nations in the same way that the Roma are: they travelled to those other nations. They still came from just one place. And the fact that other people have entered the race and watered it down from time to time is also true of every other race on the planet.

Regardless of what you may choose to maintain, the word "Jew" still has two distinct meanings.