Middlesex, England - The chief rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, has been given two weeks to decide whether an 11-year-old boy is Jewish after the child was refused a place at a popular religious school.
Guy Sagal's mother converted to Judaism in Israel in the early 1990s, a move authorised by the country's rabbinical court.
When her son applied to start at the Jewish Free School in Middlesex, the Office of the Chief Rabbi, the school's religious authority, decided her conversion was invalid and ruled that Guy was not Jewish and could not attend the school.
"I was shocked because it challenges our concept of who we are," said Helen Sagal, from Mill Hill, north London. "It is not as if I turned up with a certificate from some remote country where there are only a few Jewish people, I lived in Israel for six years and have an Israeli husband, and people there authorised and accepted my conversion. To be told years later that you are not who, or what, you thought you were is very unsettling for me and even more so for the children."
The family has challenged the decision, and an appeal panel set up by the Department for Education and Skills has asked the chief rabbi to give his verdict - and explanation - within two weeks.
"Despite our best efforts we have not been able to find out why they made the decision they did," Mrs Sagal said. "So far everything has been said in very vague way, what we have been trying to do is understand the reasons. We need to hear first hand from the chief rabbi what the decision is and why it has been made."
The school has been told to offer Guy a place if the chief rabbi rules that he is "halachically Jewish".
Last night a spokeswoman for the Office of the Chief Rabbi refused to comment on the case but confirmed that it had received a letter from the panel and it would respond in the next 24 hours.
The Office of the Chief Rabbi does have the right to rule on the status of people in institutions under its jurisdiction, like the Jewish Free School, but observers say it is "unheard of" for it to overturn a ruling by the rabbinical court in Israel.
Mrs Sagal said yesterday she had tried to protect her son from the details of the case.
"He knows there is a problem about him going to the school but he does not understand the issue of my status. In the end this is about sorting out a school for him. His friends are now starting to talk about which schools they are going to and the process is moving on without him. But it's not just that, I think it would be very unsettling for him if he began to question who he is after all this time."
The family says it is particularly perplexed because Guy's Jewish status was accepted when he underwent the traditional practice of being circumcised as a baby.
"I think maybe they have rushed into something without thinking it through," said Mrs Sagal. "My husband was born and brought up in Israel, he served in the Israeli army and I converted to Judaism in Israel before our marriage."