What Is an English Jew?: The Legal Construction of Jewish Identity under the UK Equality Act of 2010
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What is an English Jew?:
The Legal Construction of Jewish Identity
Under the UK Equality Act of 2010
Lesley Klaff
INTRODUCTION
The question of Jewish identity has preoccupied people for centuries.1 Are
Jews a race, a religion, an ethnic minority, or all three? It may surprise readers
to learn that the question of Jewish identity was settled as a matter of English
law in 1983 in the case of Mandla v. Dowell Lee.2 The House of Lords held that
Jews are both a racial and an ethnic group, as well as a religious group, for
the purposes of the Race Relations Act of 1976 (RRA 1976)3 The RRA 1976
[c8(now superseded) provided protection from direct and indirect discrimination
in education, employment, training, housing, and the provision of goods,
facilities, and services, to members of a racial group but excluded religious
groups from its protection as a matter of deliberate legislative policy.4 This
meant that someone claiming protection from discrimination under the RRA
1976 had to be classed as a member of a racial group to get the law's protection.
The RRA 1976 defined racial group in section 3 (1) as a group of persons
defined by reference to colour, race, nationality or ethnic or national origins.5
The main issue in the Mandla case was whether Sikhs were protected by the
Race Relations Act as a racial group, and it was in seeking to determine the
question of Sikh identity for the purposes of the RRA 1976 that both the Court of
Appeal and the House of Lords said that Jews constituted a racial group for the
purposes of section 3 (1)6 This was because Jews could be defined by reference to
their ethnic origins.7
Although the Court of Appeal and the House of Lords came to the same
conclusion about the nature of Jewish identity in English law, they did so for
different reasons. For Lord Denning in the Court of Appeal, Jews were defined
by reference to their ethnic origins for the purposes of the statutory definition of
racial group because they were to be distinguished from non-Jews by a
* Lesley Klaff is a Senior Lecturer in Law at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice, Sheffield
Hallam University, England, a research fellow at the London Centre for the Study of Contemporary
Antisemitism, and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism. She works pro bono for
UK Lawyers for Israel, an NGO dedicated to combating Israel-related antisemitism, and is a member of
the advisory board of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C.
This paper was first presented at the Inaugural Law vs. Antisemitism Conference, held at IU McKinney
School of Law in March 2022. The author would like to thank Diane Klein for her helpful comments.
1 See, e.g., ZvI GITELMAN, The Evolution of Jewish Identities, in JEWISH IDENTITIES IN POSTCOMMUNIST
RUSSIA AND UKRAINE: AN UNCERTAIN ETHNICITY 46, 46-47 (2012).
2 Mandla v. Dowell Lee [1983] 2 AC 548 (HL) 555.
s Id. at 561-62; see also Race Relations Act 1976, c. 74, § 3(1) (UK), repealed by the Equality Act 2010,
sch. 27.
4 Mandla v. Dowell Lee [1982] 3 All ER 1108, 1109 (citing Race Relations Act 1976, c. 74, pt. 1(3)(1),
repealed by the Equality Act 2010, sch. 27).
a Race Relations Act 1976, c. 74, § 3(1) (UK), repealed by the Equality Act 2010, sch. 27.
6 See Mandla, 3 All ER at 1112-13; Mandla, 2 AC at 561.
7 See Mandla, 3 All ER at 1117; Mandla, 2 AC at 558.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/injlaseq11&div=10&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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What Is an English Jew?: The Legal Construction of Jewish Identity under the UK Equality Act of 2010
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