Rabbi Hitting the Airwaves

Since the Supreme Court in the UK made international headlines following its ruling on the “Who is a Jew” controversy, Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet has been hitting the airwaves, both local and international to decry what he calls “a scandal beyond imaginable proportion.”

He went on live debate on Newsnight with David Lightman, the father of the girl denied entry into the Jews Free School because the Office of the Chief Rabbi did not accept the mother’s conversion.

This was the second time both featured on Newsnight, the country’s foremost news programme.

While Lightman decried the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks for “waiting his community’s money on bringing the case to trial because of just two kids,” Schochet countered that “today it is two, tomorrow it is two hundred. This goes to the very core and essence of ‘Who is a Jew’ and you can’t put a price on that.”

In another debate with Danny Rich, head of the Liberal movement in the UK, Rabbi Schochet told BBC Radio, “Every country determines its own rules for citizenship based on the constitution of that country. Similarly, the religious code of a faith community is the sole authority to determine legitimate membership within the community. For Judaism, the constitution is the Torah which determines what constitutes a Jew or Jewish identity.”

But perhaps Schochet really took his gloves off when interviewed by Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan, Head Shliach to Maryland, oh his Awake, Alive & Jewish show on WMET 1160am.

Schochet told Kaplan that the Supreme Court without exception, were emphatic in denying that racism played any part in this case and that “the most important outcome is a point made, one way or another, by eight of the nine judges, that there may be something wrong with race relations legislation as it stands.”

Asked about the implications of the ruling Schochet explained: “Picture the scenario, you have ten young men sitting in a room ready to pray morning service. You will read from the Torah, you will call some of them up to the Torah, you will recite sacred passages, you will conduct all the ritual associated with a minyan. But one of them might in fact not be Jewish. Indeed all of them might in fact not be Jewish! How do we know? You can’t ask; you have no papers to determine status; it’s a scandal beyond all imaginable proportion.”

He explained that in order to get a change in law, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, which would make representation to government, would need the consensus of the wider Jewish community.

However, as was reported in the past week’s Jewish Chronicle, the non-Orthodox movements will support a change in legislation “only if the schools promise not to revert to the status quo ante.”

Schochet said: “We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t. How dare they hold us hostage that it can be only on condition that we do not revert to the status quo ante? We cannot and we must not yield to this pressure under any circumstances.”

He then went one critical step further when he added: “If I can dare go public with this, I think we really missed an opportunity here. When the Appeal Court ruling came out several months ago the silence was deafening. This may not be about who is a Jew, but people don’t see it that way.

“This may not be about interdenominational infighting, but people don’t see it that way. This may be only about a point in law, but I’ve done enough broadcasts and I can tell you that people don’t see it that way, especially considering the way others have now sought to exploit the ruling.

“And so I went on Television and Radio at the time, and I’d like to think, articulated our point of view in a sound and reasonable manner. I was a lone voice in the wilderness. It was all about the typical Anglo-Jewish malice of ‘hush hush and don’t rock the boat.’

“And now, only after the Supreme Court ruling, after the fact, was everyone encouraging that we make as much noise as possible. So now we struggle to change a law with a liberal gun pointed at our heads.”

Rabbi Kaplan asked Rabbi Schochet how he has adapted to the UK culture to which he replied: “It is precisely a situation like this that evokes such passion in me, because it highlights the difference in approach between how things would have been handles in the States and how they are handled so badly here. The day I get used to this place, is the day I have to leave.”