Hi all!
Except for one major hiccup, Jews and mormons have generally gotten along very well. Brigham Young University opened a branch campus on the Mt. of Olives a while back & is scrupulously honoring its commitment
not to proselytize (which it had to agree to as a condition for being allowed to open the branch). The small Jewish community in Utah (Salt Lake City & environs) has always gotten along very well with its Mormon neighbors (see <
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=10836&intcategoryid=5>.
The major "hiccup" I referred to has to do with the Mormon practice of posthumous baptisms. The following is an article from Dec. 12, 2002:
_____
Mormons renew their vow
to stop baptizing deceased Jews
By Bill Gladstone
TORONTO, Dec. 12 (JTA) A renewed vow from the Mormon Church to end
the practice of posthumously baptizing Jews has drawn a mixed reaction.
A Jewish official who met with church leaders this week believes the pledge is
meaningful, but skeptics are focusing on the fact that the church made a
similar vow seven years ago.
Church elders made the promise at a meeting Tuesday in New York, when
Jewish and Mormon officials discussed allegations that church members are
still baptizing many deceased Jews, including thousands of Holocaust victims.
Seven years after the church signed an agreement to do all it could to stop the
practice, new evidence emerged that the churchs vast International
Genealogical Index lists as many as 20,000 Holocaust victims and perhaps
many more all evidently baptized by proxy after their deaths.
Ernest Michel, a Holocaust survivor who in 1981 was chairman of the World
Gathering of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, notified church officials about the
renewed problem.
Church elders Monte Brough and D. Todd Christofferson traveled from Salt
Lake City to meet with him this week in New York.
During the meeting, the officials reaffirmed their intention to keep the 1995
agreement, which means removing not only Holocaust victims, but all Jews
who have been posthumously baptized from the list, Michel told JTA.
He added that in his opinion this intention has never changed.
Michel also said Jewish and church officials agreed to prepare a joint
memorandum outlining a procedure by which the church would remove all
Jewish names from the International Genealogical Index.
The parties will likely be in close consultation for several weeks, he added.
Meanwhile, the church issued a statement to make clear its willingness to
deal with Jewish concerns.
When the church is made aware of documented concerns, action is taken in
compliance with the agreement, Christofferson said in the statement, which
was released Wednesday.
At the same time, Christofferson alluded to the difficulty of the task.
Removing the names of Holocaust victims and other known Jews from a data
base containing hundreds of millions of deceased persons is an ongoing,
labor-intensive process requiring name-by-name research, he said in the
statement.
To judge by recent Internet chatter, however, some Jewish genealogists are
expressing strong doubts that a new agreement will solve the problem and
they are discussing legal action.
How will they know someone is Jewish when they are extracting names from
birth indexes, as they do on a weekly basis?" one Jewish researcher wrote.
They didnt know in the past, the researcher added. What changes will take
place in the future?
Michel initiated an earlier round of negotiations with the church in 1995 after
discovering that his parents, who perished in the Holocaust, had been
posthumously inducted into the Mormon faith by zealous church workers acting
out of love.
After protracted negotiations with Jewish officials in 1995, the church removed
the names of 380,000 Holocaust victims from its database and agreed to work
to prevent church members from trying to convert deceased Jews who were
not related to them.
Church followers are required to research their own family trees and to submit
the names of their non-Mormon ancestors for baptism by proxy.
For each name submitted, a proxy is baptized in a Mormon temple.
Ignoring church policy, some zealous followers have culled names from a
wide variety of historical sources, including memorial books of Holocaust
victims from Central and Eastern Europe.
Helen Radkey, a genealogical researcher in Salt Lake City, recently conducted
a limited search in the International Genealogical Indexs computerized list of 2
billion names. She found some 20,000 Jewish-sounding names from Lodz,
Krakow, Bialystok and other former Jewish centers in Eastern Europe, and
asserts that many had belonged to Holocaust victims.
Radkey supplied the results of her research to Michel days before Tuesdays
meeting.
This issue is really important to me, said Radkey, an Australian-born
Christian.
The Jews have been treated badly by Christianity for 2,000 years. Any time
someone or something in the Christian world seems to imply that the Jewish
religion is inferior in some way, that is the bottom line for me. What the
Mormons are doing is not acceptable, and the Jews need to say something.
Radkey and others contend that the 20,000 Jewish names are likely just the tip
of the iceberg.
There may be hundreds of thousands of Jewish names in there, said
Bernard Kouchel, a retired builder and Jewish genealogist in Fort Lauderdale,
Fla.
Having conducted his own search of the International Genealogical Index in
recent weeks, Kouchel found scores of notable Jews, including Rashi,
Maimonides, Menachem Begin, Irving Berlin, Samuel Bronfman, Marc Chagall,
Hank Greenberg, Irving Howe and Gilda Radner.
Such revelations have led to angry accusations in Jewish genealogical circles
that the church has done too little to uphold its seven-year-old agreement with
the Jewish community.
Some genealogists have characterized the practice of turning dead Jews into
Mormons as a brazen act that may obscure the historical record for future
generations.
Expressing outrage in recent days at the persistence of a practice that they
liken to the forced conversion of souls in the afterlife, some have hinted at the
possibility of a class action lawsuit for damages.
Few have been placated by the churchs explanation that deceased persons
may choose to accept or reject the baptism in the afterlife.
From their point of view, its an article of faith, and from our point of view, its a
slap in the face, said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon
Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles.
Some church officials have claimed that they cannot control the activities of all
of their members.
Brough, one of the elders at Tuesdays meeting, has said that Mormons who
have submitted thousands of Jewish names for baptism intended only a
Christian act of service and acknowledged that their acts were misguided
and insensitive.
Jewish representatives now agree that the church must exert more control over
its flock.
Its clear that there has been no serious monitoring of what goes into the
International Genealogical Index, said Cooper, who participated in
negotiations with church officials last year to remove more than 200 Jewish
names from the list, including those of Albert Einstein and David Ben-Gurion.
This is something that keeps coming up, and the church is going to have to
find a better way to put closure on it, he said.
Link: <
http://www.jta.org/page_view_story.asp?intarticleid=12178&intcategoryid=2>
_____
We find the idea of Jews being posthumously baptized into the Mormon church to be
deeply offensive in the extreme & cannot express our disgust, outrage & revulsion at this practice in strong enough terms. It takes the spiritual hounding of Jews to new lows; not even the grave is a refuge from over-zealous missionaries! But hopefully, ongoing dialogue will deal with this problem.
Be well!
ssv
