C is the ten-year-old daughter of Jewish parents who divorced in 2010 and agreed that their two children should live with each alternately. Neither parent was observant and, though C's brother had been circumcised, they did not teach the children about Judaism. The father then converted to Christianity and, with the mother's agreement, took the children to church on alternate Sundays.
In 2011 C decided that she wished to be baptised. Her mother applied – without notice to the father – for a prohibited steps order forbidding him from baptising, confirming or dedicating either child into the Christian faith. HHJ Platt made an order that neither child was to be baptised or celebrate a bar/bat mitzvah without the consent of the other parent until further order or final hearing and ordered Cafcass to report on C's wishes and feelings in the matter.
The father accepted that the children were and always would be Jewish. However, he was adamant that it was the children who had decided to go to church. Equally, the mother accepted that the children had been brought up in a non-religious household; and though she alleged that this was because her ex-husband had prevented her from practising her religion she conceded that since their divorce she had made no attempt to introduce the children to Jewish teachings and practices beyond lighting the Shabbat candle on Friday nights. Both agreed that C was a very bright and mature girl who knows her own mind. HHJ Platt observed that in Jewish law a person who is born a Jew cannot deprive himself of his Jewish status and that Christian baptism does not have any effect on that status. He was satisfied that C understood the nature of baptism and concluded that her wishes and feelings were genuine and entitled to proper respect, that baptism would not affect her family relationships or prevent her from learning more about Judaism should she so wish and that no irrevocable consequences would flow from it. He therefore decided that it was in her best interests to be enrolled in a baptism class and to be baptised as soon as she was ready. In addition, however, because he regarded confirmation as being an issue of much greater significance to C he ordered that she should not be confirmed before her sixteenth birthday without her mother's consent. [Frank Cranmer]
