After battling to get my daughter into JFS for over five years, we now have victory. While there is a part of me that feels a huge sense of relief, my overriding sensation is one of sorrow, sadness and anger.
First, because things should never have gone to court, let alone the highest in the land.
For the past five years we tried to talk to the Chief Rabbi, the Beth Din and the Office of the Chief Rabbi, only to be met with silence. We would have chosen a private conversation, but the OCR and Beth Din ensured this could never happen.
Secondly, I am saddened by the obscene amounts of money and resources that have been employed to stop two Jewish children receiving a Jewish secondary education.
Thirdly, the victory is a partial victory. I hope that my daughter will now be able to enter the JFS sixth form, but this is because the courts forced the OCR to accept their responsibilities and not because they finally came to their senses and accepted my wife’s Israeli Orthodox conversion or the founding multi-denominational ethos of the school.
This leads to my final point. There are too few of us to be obsessed with who is a Jew or whose brand of Judaism is the one to follow. Let’s leave that up to God and let us unite and focus on the real challenges we face.
David Lightman is an 'interested party'