The 19-year-old former university student left his course in November
last year and applied for the benefit. But he was refused the
allowance…because his stipulation not to work on Friday afternoons and
Saturdays to observe Shabbat was deemed “not reasonable.”
The JC reports:
A Charedi man has won a landmark appeal against the Department for Work and Pensions after he was denied jobseeker’s allowance for over six months and told he must work on Shabbat.
A tribunal judge said Jacob Slinger, 19, from Greater Manchester, was wrongly refused the £56.80 [$86]-per-week benefit by the DWP at a hearing of the social entitlement chamber, which adjudicates benefits disputes.
Ordering the government department to back-pay over £1,500 [$2261] of the benefit, tribunal judge David Hewitt called on other Jewish people denied money to come forward.…
Slinger said he and his family had been forced into poverty as a result of the DWP’s continued refusal to grant him the allowance. “My grandmother used every penny of her savings to support me,” he said.
The 19-year-old former university student left his course in November last year and applied for the benefit. But he was refused the allowance…because his stipulation not to work on Friday afternoons and Saturdays to observe Shabbat was deemed “not reasonable”.…
“If people have been turned down for these reasons, they should make an appeal to this tribunal” [, Hewitt said.]…