More Evidence of Self-defeating Attitude Among Religious Jews

An article in The Jewish Advocate newspaper of July 3, 2009 states that Jewish religious schools prefer to exclude students who don't have a Jewish mother, while some allow such students as long as they convert ASAP. What hogwash! One can readily see why Jews are so low in number in the U.S. and represent a rapidly shrinking proportion of the country's population. What is the purpose of this exclusionary attitude? Don't the schools' leaders recognize that any student and his/her family willing to bear the burden of tuition as well as the extra daily school hours needed for Jewish studies is quite motivated to be Jewish. Isn't that enough? The religionists seem to feel that someone is a Jew if his mother was Jewish, even if he knows absolutely nothing about Jewish teachings. But they feel that someone with only a Jewish father is not Jewish even if he/she bears the burden of daily Jewish study. This attitude is maddening!! Judaism would be much stronger and more dynamic if Jewish schools and congregations welcomed those who want to be Jews rather than setting up roadblocks for them.