from the enlightenment to the state of israel 455
Jewish either by birth or by conversion (in both cases, variously defined
by different communities) and regardless of religious belief or obser-
vance. The issue came unexpectedly into the gaze of the general public
in the United Kingdom over a dispute about entry requirements for
pupils applying to the Jewish Free School (JFS) in London in 2009. The
school, which was popular and oversubscribed, admitted only those
children certified as Jewish by the Office of the Chief Rabbi. The law in
the United Kingdom permits selection for school entry on religious
grounds. Entry to JFS required either that the mother was Jewish by
descent or conversion prior to the child’s birth (the conventional rab-
binic definition) or that the child had converted or had been accepted on
a course of conversion. A child was denied entry on the grounds that his
mother’s conversion to Judaism was not valid because it had not taken
place under orthodox auspices. The father appealed to the secular
courts, which found that using matrilineal descent as a criterion of Jew-
ish status constitutes race discrimination and is therefore illegal. The
practical result is that the United Kingdom Supreme Court has imposed
on Jews a religious practice test to establish Jewish identity so as to
qualify Jews as a religious group for the purpose of school entry.^22
For some diaspora Jews, synagogue membership has primarily a
social rather than religious function, sometimes with the added incen-
tive of guaranteed burial rights within a Jewish cemetery (although
Jewish communities will bury in any case dead Jews of any background,
as a religious duty, so long as they are known to be Jewish and, usually,
so long as they have not been cremated). It is quite common for Jews to
fulfil their religious obligations to a synagogue community by attending
prayers twice a year, on Rosh haShanah (the New Year) and on Yom
Kippur (the Day of Atonement), much as secularized Christians may
attend church only at Christmas and Easter. For such Jews, the touch-
stone of continuing religious allegiance is the Yom Kippur service, the
most solemn part of the liturgical year. The equivalent touchstones for
religious life at home are family gatherings for the Seder service on the
eve of Pesach and the Sabbath meal on Friday nights. A pair of candle-
sticks for the Sabbath eve will be seen in many Jewish homes in which
no other aspect of Judaism is to be found, and a great deal of nostalgia
surrounds these rituals.
It is possible to trace a history of Judaism through the genetic evolu-
tion of Jewish food as it is still eaten. For the Ashkenazi world, hallah
bread, roast chicken (replacing roast goose or brisket), carrot tzimmes
(a sweetened vegetable stew), potato salad, potato kugel, for Friday