A Jew Who Isn'T Offended By Proxy Baptisms

[Saints Alive]

http://articles.boston.com/2012-02-29/opinion/31106883_1_proxy-baptisms-mormon-temple-mormon-church

Good to know that they exist.

[LeSellers]

It is good to note that someone has a rational positinon the question.

There are people who live to take offense. Here's another related, albeit not closely, example.

"In a totalitarian government, they would love our system [of public education]," Bishop James McFadden of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, told WHTM-TV. "This is what Hitler and Mussolini and all of them tried to establish—a monolith, so all the children would be educated in one set of beliefs and one way of doing things."

McFadden's remarks touched off a firestorm of complaints from the usual suspects.

Barry Morrison, Eastern Pennsylvania/Southern New Jersey regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said McFadden "should not be making his point at the expense of the memory of six million Jews and millions of others who perished in the Holocaust," arguing that the bishop had "inappropriately [drawn] reckless comparisons" to that horrific event.

—

Bishop McFadden and "Totalitarian" Public Schooling

No such comparison was made. But the "usual suspects" drew their conclusions based, it seems on nothing other than an irrational hypersensitivity, just as Radkey has incited others in regards to our practice of baptizing for the dead.

There's no reasoning with some folks: they have no reason, they're all emotion.

Lehi

[bluebell]

On the one hand, i can completely understand why Jewish people would be hypersensitive to these issues, especially if they or a loved one had been a victim of the holocaust. Before the holocaust, Jews had become accustomed to certain levels of anti-semitism and believed that riding out the storm (whatever form it came in) was the best course of action when persecution flaired up. They believed this because no one could comprehend the horrors that they were heading towards-they did not believe anyone could be that insane or evil.

Now they know though. Now the world knows that the slippery slope exists when it comes to anti-semitism, and the world knows what's at the bottom of it, and i don't blame Jews at all for being hypersensitive to it and being proactive in nipping anything that can be construed as anti-semitism in the bud.

Having said that, i do wish that more people, some Jews included, understood the holocaust better.

I just read a quote in an article where a Jewish man stated:

"I am a Holocaust survivor. It is so offensive in the sense that Holocaust victims were killed solely because they were Jews. And here comes the Mormon church taking away their Jewishness," Foxman said earlier this week. "It's like killing them twice."

Jewish Holocaust victims were killed because they were Jewish in race, not religion. Nazis sent Jews who had previously converted to Christianity to the gas chambers just as they did Jews who practiced Judaism. In fact, they published propaganda specifically outlining why conversion to Christianity made no difference. Catholic or protestant-the nazis didn't care.

When that is understood, it can be understood that, in regards to the holocaust, mormons cannot take away from a Jew their Jewishness, nor deny what a Jewish victim died for if they died in the Holocaust.

I'm not saying that if this man understood this he would feel differently. I'm just saying that when something as emotional as the holocaust is being dealt with, accuracy is important. It's one of the things that keeps the emotion of it from becoming unreasonable.

[Saints Alive]

Reacting to emotion without a firm grounding in fact and rationality ALWAYS leads to bad things.

[Storm Rider]

Talk about loving to play the victim and demanding that everyone else play along. I wonder how often we remember the 20 million Russians that Stalin killed? Where is their monument and the numerous memorials for their slaughter? Frankly, I tire of this hypersensitivity.

I often hear that we should remember the Holocaust and never forget, but we seem to forget all the other pogroms that have taken place in the world. Not one of them is worse than another; not one of them should be remembered any more than the others. They all were terribly sad and full of evil.

I reject any proposal that performing baptisms for the dead somehow removes their ethnic origins or their religious affiliations during their life. Those that are offended are looking to be offended and nothing more. It would take an idiot to assume that a holocaust victim was LDS because their baptismal work was done 60 years after they died. I am sorry to be so hardheaded and hard-hearted, but, I just refuse to buy into the Jews killed by Hitler were more significant than Stalin's massacre of his own people, or the ethnic cleanings of Slovenia, or the those who perished in Rwanda.

[blackstrap]

The Poles and the Russians were not spared Hitler's wrath. Millions of chinese were not spared Mao's cleansing efforts. And the Cambodian killing fields were just an agricultural experiment. That said,2 wrongs (dozens of wrongs) don't make the Holocaust any less horrific. The media and others are johnny one note on this issue ,but at least they are playing that one note so as to remind us to be aware.

[thesometimesaint]

Who isn't aware of the Holocaust? Some idiots deny it happened, but they are still aware of it. We are NOT making Jews out to be Mormons, any more than my Catholic friends praying for my soul after my death will make me Catholic. Personally I'm pleased with the idea that someone of my distant future relatives will think enough of me to mumble my name. Let alone offer me a chance at happiness. We offer the opportunity for the dead to accept or reject the Restored Gospel. They are still free to accept or reject it.

[volgadon]

Jewish Holocaust victims were killed because they were Jewish in race, not religion.

Both are intertwined in the Jewish understanding.

[bluebell]

Both are intertwined in the Jewish understanding.

I would guess that the man i quoted does understand that on some level, but his statements about LDS baptism taking away someone's jewishness (who died in the holocaust) and killing them twice certainly seems to be contradictory to that understanding.

I've heard that argument before from people (that Jewish people died for their religion in the holocaust and that they could have escaped death by converting to Christianity but didn't, so baptizing holocaust victims is insulting what they died for) and I think it's important for people to realize that for Hitler, it wasn't about anti-Judiaism.

[Pahoran]

Both are intertwined in the Jewish understanding.

True, but the relevant point is that the Nazis weren't rounding up Jews based upon how devout they were.

Regards,

Pahoran

[CQUIRK]

True, but the relevant point is that the Nazis weren't rounding up Jews based upon how devout they were.

Regards,

Pahoran

Heck, they rounded up Jews that were only Jewish by blood and not observant of their religion.

[thesometimesaint]

Heck they rounded up anybody who disagreed with them, or who didn't fit their model Aryan.

[Saints Alive]

They had a lineage requirement, I can’t remember how many generations you had to be removed from Jewish ancestry, but you had to prove that you were so many generations remove or you gat carted off as well. Imagine your parents parents converting to Christianity, you never having know you had Jewish ancestry and still being persecuted.

[Stargazer]

Here is another Jew who is arguably not offended by proxy baptisms:

Marvin Goldstein.

He is a fairly famous concert pianist who besides being a Jew is an active member of the Church. He gave a concert in our town (Olympia, WA) a number of years ago, and gave a fireside on the Sunday following at the stake center. He made some really beautiful music, and gave a beautiful testimony.