Major Reform shul lets kids with Jewish dads identify as Jewish

The country’s biggest Reform synagogue has decided to adopt a policy allowing the child of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother to be recognised as Jewish without having to go through a conversion process.

Edgware and Hendon (EHRS) announced the generational change this week, making it the latest – and by far the biggest – progressive congregation to sign up to the ‘inherited status’ policy first introduced by the Reform Movement seven years ago.

Under the policy approved by Reform’s Beth Din, to have inherited status, children must have been raised as Jewish. Orthodox Jewish synagogues, as well as some Reform synagogues, maintain that to be considered Jewish without conversion, a child’s mother must be Jewish.

The shul’s decision could have a wide-ranging impact. About 20 percent of children at EHRS have one Jewish parent and “a high proportion” of EHRS children at Jewish day schools have a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother.

Since its introduction, the rule has been adopted sporadically across the movement, with each synagogue choosing whether to incorporate it. Following a period of advocacy from Rabbis Mark Goldsmith and Debbie Young-Somers, however, the EHRS council has now approved it.

The synagogue said it would give “a route to Jewish status which is not considered to be conversion as that is not the emotional reality for those children” who have been brought up as Jewish.

“It is truly a delight to help a young person claim their Jewish status where they have always lived as a Jew,” said Goldsmith.

“To call it ‘conversion’ can be insulting to the commitment their parents and they have made to their Jewish upbringing. Inherited status enables who they truly are to be recognised and celebrated.”