So you call yourself Jewish?
. So you call yourself Jewish? The Supreme Court's rejection of a faith school's admissions policy has revived an ancient but fierce debate in the Jewish community about what it takes to be considered 'one of us' Paul Vallely Friday 18 December 2009 01:00 The first prime minister of the state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, was said to have once written to 400 scholars and asked them: "Who is a Jew and what is a Jew?" He received, the story continues, 400 different answers. The decision by the Supreme Court to insist that the over-subscribed Jewish Free School (JFS) in London must use religious rather racial definitions to select its pupils has reignited an ancient debate about what constitutes the nature of Jewishness. Different people locate the answer in different places somewhere inside a triangle which is bounded by faith, ethnicity and culture – with identity, religious practice and the politics of Zionism each pull...