23rd June 2015
 

The decision by the British Reform movement's rabbis to recognise the children of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother as Jewish without conversion is a radical, but not revolutionary, one.

The movement is not the first to have adopted the principle of what is now being called "equilineal descent".

While the Reform move marks a clear departure from traditional halachah - where Jewish status derives from the mother - it brings it into line with other Progressive groups such as Liberal Judaism in Britain, which began to recognise patrilineal Jews as far back as the mid-1950s, and American Reform.  Read more