More on Defining Identity

There is an interesting case before the British Supreme Court about how religious identity is defined and who gets to define it.

The question revolves around a child whose mother converted in a progressive, rather than an Orthodox, synagogue. The Jewish school they applied for the child to go to did not qualify the mother as Jewish and thus, using an ancient definition of who is Jewish, did not qualify the child as Jewish.

A British court has said that using a test that depends on one's parents' identity makes it an ethnic and therefore, illegal standard, as opposed to a religious and therefore allowed standard.

It made me wonder if Christianity is part of what brought such an influential focus on the individual as opposed to the collective to Western culture. Other faiths seem much more interested in the community as a whole than Christianity does, at least in some manifestations.

Personally, I can see the British court's side. But I think the larger issue is that by allowing the school to do what it wanted to do, they're allowing one branch of Judaism to define the whole religion. Which wouldn't be an issue, except that the school is publically financed. If it wants to be a private, independent, Orthodox Jewish school, that's one thing. But a public, Jewish school? You gotta let people define themselves, as Fran would say.