Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: Religious liberty’s under threat — on both sides of the pond
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was praised by a Catholic cardinal and then blessed by a Mormon apostle.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was praised by a Catholic cardinal and then blessed by a Mormon apostle.
The Mormon Church doesn’t endorse candidates or political parties, and although most American Mormons are Republicans, a Mormon Democrat has served as the Senate Majority Leader for the last five years. Owing to our history of persecution and emphasis on self-reliance, there is also a noteworthy group of Mormons with libertarian sympathies who do not easily identify with either party.
Chip Bronson and Stephanie London’s response to the excellent JTA piece on Rachel Corrie saddened me deeply (Letters, Sept. 7). I read the article (“Rachel Corrie Suit Hinged on One Small Question,” Aug. 31) and had a different reaction. I wanted to believe it was all an accident and was relieved that Judge [Oded] Gershon ruled thus. Nevertheless, his choice to use this moment as a soapbox to denounce an admittedly ethically challenged organization reveals his own biases on the matter. I remain unsure whether it was an accident or whether the driver actually saw Corrie and deliberately buried her alive, though I am not yet ready to believe the assertions of Corrie’s parents or her lawyer. We simply don’t know what happened.
Mitt Romney’s Lacrosse moment awaits him. The Democratic convention in Los Angeles was where Joe Lieberman made history as the first Jewish candidate on a major ticket on Aug. 17, 2000. But two days later, history came to life in Lacrosse, Wis., the little college town where he walked — and pointedly did not drive — to the local synagogue on his first post-nomination Shabbat.
On Sunday April 29, 2012 at the Israel Festival in Los Angeles, many people visited Jews for Judaism’s booth to acquire literature and show their support for our efforts to keep Jews Jewish.
Few would describe the book of Leviticus as a page-turner. Its often-turgid descriptions of sacrifices (or korbanot) can be seen nowadays as perfectly calculated to let shul-goers catch up on their sleep. When we as a people lost korbanot, however, we lost something deeply profound — and our relationship with God demands that somehow we recover it.
The Mormon Church is restricting access to its genealogical records relating to Holocaust victims in a move to protect their names from posthumous baptisms.
Daniel Pearl was baptized in a Mormon proxy ritual in another case of a prominent deceased Jew discovered to have been baptized posthumously in recent weeks.
The Mormon church has apologized for the posthumous baptism of the parents of Simon Wiesenthal. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last month submitted the names of Wiesenthal\’s parents for posthumous baptism, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. Wiesenthal was a Holocaust survivor who died in 2005; his mother was killed in the Nazi death camp Belzec in 1942.