July 28, 2010

Judea Pearl: Jews of Discomfort

What makes fog float in midair, while raindrops fall straight down to earth? Physics teaches us that it is all a matter of “surface-to-weight ratio” — a simple parameter that determines whether soap bubbles rise or fall and how many passengers a jet plane can carry. The larger the surface, so the theory goes, the easier it is for an object to lift its weight against gravitational pull.

The analogy came to mind this past week, on Tisha B’Av, when I pondered the fate of the Jewish people and tried to assess our collective surface-to-weight ratio.

It was a particularly cogent day to compare the amount of energy we spend at the boundaries of our existence, facing outward to defend our being, vis à vis the resources we waste facing inward, on self-congratulation, finger-pointing and other forms of added weight.

Take the protest march on behalf of Gilad Shalit last month. Tens of thousands of Israelis took to the roads, tens of thousands stood by roadsides feeding the marchers, and millions watched the marchers on Israeli TV. I have not seen any of it on CNN, for it was aimed inward, toward the Israeli government. We would have surely seen some of it had this enormous energy been directed outward, say, as a protest against the United Nations or the Red Cross or foreign embassies for not doing their share in stopping the most blatant human rights violation of our generation.

Or take Peter Beinart’s much-debated article “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment” (The New York Review of Books, June 10). Judging by the number of invitations I received to attend his lecture in Los Angeles, one would think that this creative intellectual has finally discovered a formula for peace or a new weapon to silence rockets without hurting civilians or, at the very least, an Arab intellectual willing to accept Israel. None of the above. Reading his article again and again, all I hear is how uncomfortable he feels being a Jew at a time when Jews are accused of supporting a nondemocratic entity called Israel, and how we can now extricate ourselves from this discomfort by speaking out, not against the distortions, but against a leadership that places its faith in the solid democratic character of Israeli society. I hear a desperate son coming home screaming: “Mother, the boys at school called you dirty names again. I hate you for causing me to face those bullies, and I hate you for making me feel so inadequate, unable to defend your honor except by joining them in amplifying your blemishes.”

Beinart was treated royally in Los Angeles because he is the prophetic voice for many Jews of Discomfort; they love him because he takes their discomfort and elevates it to a noble feeling of moral purity. They used to feel guilty for Israel’s actions while conscious of her problems; no more. Elevated in virtue, they now see every blemish on Israel’s face as “the litmus test” for her impure personality — hers, not theirs.

Observe another Jewish intellectual, the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy, who is perhaps further to the left than Beinart. He, too, feels uncomfortable with some of Israel’s actions, and he, too, proposed ways to correct them. Yet instead of pointing fingers at the Jewish establishment, he takes to the trenches and, using his column on The Huffington Post, he tells his leftist colleagues: Stop this madness, look at yourself in the mirror. Is your liberalism dead when it comes to Israel? (June 7, Huffington Post).

It is all a matter of surface-to-weight ratio, says my physics book: Jews of spine confront their maligners, Jews of Discomfort blame their leaders.

Deep inside, Levy knows, perhaps, that ours may well be the last generation in which Jews can earn respect in academic and intellectual circles; pro-coexistence scholars are already pariahs in academia, forced to hide their sentiments from colleagues. (See my column in this newspaper, “Our New Marranos,” March 19, 2009), and if Israel goes under, Jews of Discomfort will certainly find themselves exorcised by the elite they now seek to appease. They would be remembered not for their discomfort, but for what they really were: members of a people who once supported a mistake called Israel — ruling elites do not easily forgive “mistakes” they labored to undo.

I will end with a request to readers. If you agree with my views or share my concerns, do not simply succumb to the temptation of sending this article to another member of your synagogue. Take to the trenches and face outward. Knock on the door of your gentile neighbor or officemate and say: Remember, Joe, how I used to go along with all your sarcastic criticism of Israel? Times have changed, Joe. My people are in trouble, and there are things I must do even at the risk of testing our friendship. I want to tell you how strongly I feel about Israel, what is factual and what is malice in what you hear, and why our world will not be the same without that tiny, shining spot called Israel.

Judea Pearl is a professor at UCLA and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation (danielpearl.org), named after his son. He is a co-editor of “I Am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl” (Jewish Lights, 2004), winner of the National Jewish Book Award.

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How Open-Minded Are Jewish Liberals?

Jewish liberals, like other liberals, believe that there are three positive traits that describe liberals far more accurately than they describe conservatives — compassionate, intellectual and open-minded.

Though I am a Jewish conservative, I don’t believe that either side has anything close to a monopoly on compassion. There are compassionate Jews who are conservative and compassionate Jews who are liberal. As regards being intellectual, I acknowledge that there are more Jewish intellectuals who are liberal — since there are a lot more Jewish liberals, there will be a lot more liberal Jewish intellectuals. But I doubt that the percentage of Jewish liberals who are intellectuals is greater than the percentage of Jewish conservatives who are intellectuals.

My area of disagreement concerns the third self-defining liberal trait — open-mindedness. Whether Jew or gentile, open-minded is not a trait one could fairly identify with contemporary liberals. As this is a Jewish newspaper, I will confine my comments to Jews.

Before proceeding, let me offer three thoughts to help the liberal reader not take offense.

First, I mean no offense. I want to challenge the Jewish liberal, not to offend him (or her).

Second, I am generalizing, and therefore I readily acknowledge that there are open-minded Jewish liberals.

Third, if you, dear reader, are a Jewish liberal who prides him- or herself on being open-minded, one way to demonstrate this is to read what follows.

How would a Jewish liberal describe a fellow Jew who was raised in an Orthodox home, went to Orthodox Jewish schools from kindergarten through college and attended Orthodox summer camps, who socializes overwhelmingly with fellow Orthodox Jews and confines his reading largely to religious texts? A Jewish liberal would probably describe such a person as almost brainwashed, at worst, and unlikely to be open-minded, at best.

But doesn’t this describe most Jewish liberals? The vast majority of Jewish liberals were raised in a liberal home, taught by liberal teachers in high school and by liberal professors in college; they socialize overwhelmingly with fellow liberal Jews and get their news from liberal newspapers (The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, etc.) and from liberal electronic media (ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, etc.).

In terms of open-mindedness, what is the difference between these two types of Jews? (If anything, I would bet that the average Orthodox Jew has to defend his belief in God and Orthodoxy more often than the average Jewish liberal has to defend his liberalism.)

The answer, of course, is that there is no appreciable difference. If the Jewish liberal regards Orthodox Jews as described here as having been almost brainwashed, Jewish liberals need to see that the term applies equally to them. And almost brainwashed or not, the fact is that the Orthodox Jew from birth is overwhelmingly likely to live out his life as an Orthodox Jew and the Jewish liberal from birth is overwhelmingly likely to live out his life as a liberal.

This parallel is even more accurate once one acknowledges that Jewish liberals hold onto their liberalism with the same fervor and true belief that Orthodox Jews hold onto theirs.

On what grounds, then, can most Jewish liberals claim to be open-minded?

I can personally attest to the closed-mindedness among Jewish liberals. Despite having written two best-selling Jewish books and hundreds of articles on Jewish issues, and having lectured to virtually every major Jewish organization in North America for 35 years, and despite the fact that I have been an active member of a Reform synagogue for 20 years, I am almost never invited to speak at a Reform synagogue. I don’t take it personally — it isn’t personal. The Reform movement is essentially closed to politically conservative speakers even if, as in my case, they would be happy to speak only on Judaism. There is every reason to believe that far more Reform temples would invite a fervent Muslim speaker before a fervent conservative Jewish one.

Another example: Last year I was invited to be the speaker at the annual banquet of a Jewish day school in liberal Northern California. I have a 30-year record of raising funds for Jewish day schools and persuading Jewish parents to send their children to day schools. Nevertheless, the invitation was rescinded because some liberal members of the school’s board would not allow a prominent Jew who was known to be a conservative to speak — even though the entire talk would have been about supporting Jewish day schools. They actually threatened to withdraw financial support from the school unless the invitation was rescinded. Their view is that only liberals can speak at that school, just as only liberals can speak at almost any Reform synagogue. Open-minded?

Contrast this with the fact that two years ago, the Orthodox Union invited me, a non-Orthodox Jew, to address its annual West Coast convention. That would have been impressive enough. But far more impressive was the subject I was asked to speak on: “Why I am not Orthodox.” It is inconceivable that the Reform movement’s convention would invite me to speak on anything, let alone on why I am not a liberal, or why I believe Judaism is consonant with conservative American values. I have spoken at both the Orthodox and Conservative movement’s conventions, but despite my being active in a Reform congregation, it is probable that the Moshiach will come before I am invited to the Reform movement’s convention.

I can easily acknowledge many fine traits among my fellow Jews who are liberal. Open-mindedness is just not one of them.

Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host, columnist, author and public speaker. He can be heard in Los Angeles on KRLA (AM 870) weekdays 9 a.m. to noon. His Web site is dennisprager.com.

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David Suissa: Radical Peace

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion / David Suissa

It’s a sign of how the peace movement has fizzled out in Israel that even the peace process itself rarely cites peace as the goal — it’s now the “two-state solution” that is the mantra. It’s as if everyone realizes that after decades of mutual hostility and mistrust, real peace between the Jews and Palestinians is simply too much to ask for without being laughed at.

Being in the city of messianic dreams — i.e., Jerusalem — it didn’t surprise me yesterday to meet a man who dreams of changing all that. His dream is to revitalize the peace movement in Israel by making it deeper, richer and more inclusive. He wants peace to be a hot topic not just among liberal peaceniks but also radical settlers; not just among poets and artists but also hard-nosed and cynical right-wingers.

Alick Isaacs is a teacher and philosopher who, for the past 12 months, has been matchmaker-in-chief for ideological opposites. With the help of expert staff, like Sharon Leshem-Zinger and Avinoam Rosenak, he has brought together 14 influential Israeli personalities from all walks of life and, about once a month, gathered them in the same room to talk about peace.

Not peace platitudes, but intimate, personal, even raw expressions of what peace means to each of them.

The program’s core idea is to validate — and value — these individual visions of peace. But getting everyone to the table wasn’t easy. Settler rabbis, for example, dismissed the project at first. Isaacs appealed to them by talking their language. In one marathon session, he recruited a leading settler rabbi by studying the texts of his hero, Rav Kook, and pulling peace quotes such as these:

“The Lord will bless his people with peace. And the blessing of peace, which comes with the [blessing of] strength, is the peace that unites all opposites. But we must have opposites so that … something might be united, and the blessing is evident in the power of these, and these are words of the living God.”

Isaacs and his group are trying to inject vitality and freshness into an idea that has been beaten to death by the corrupting world of politics. Politics’ virtue is that it creates systems and structure to try to effect change. Isaacs’challenge has been to take a theoretical idea and give it structure.

So he has made his Talking Peace initiative a pilot program for a much bigger venture called the Center for the Advancement of Peace in Israel, which will be hosted by Mishkenot Sha’ananim, an international cultural and conference center located in Yemin Moshe in Jerusalem.

All group meetings have taken place at Mishkenot Sha’ananim, which also houses an art gallery, a restaurant and guesthouses (where I am staying, and where I met Isaacs). A major player in the venture is Uri Dromi, who is director of Mishkenot Sha’ananim and is helping put the whole project together. (Dromi, incidentally, is also a blogger for The Journal.)

Isaacs, who wears a kippah and has a doctorate in Jewish history and anthropology from Hebrew University, was careful not to put down the Israeli government’s failed efforts to make peace with the Palestinians. But it was hard for me not to draw a contrast between the emptiness of the political peace process and the seriousness of Isaacs’ initiative.

This seriousness was evident in the wrenching moments that have occurred among the 14 participants during their many encounter sessions. Animosities flared. Mistrust was common. They were strangers stuck in a room with people with completely different worldviews. It helped to have a professional group facilitator who ensured that meetings wouldn’t unravel into nasty political arguments. As the months went by, and more and more participants got to “speak their peace,” raw emotions gave way to empathy for differing viewpoints.

The real value of the program will come when Talking Peace goes on the road. As one example, Isaacs plans to team up a well-known leftist columnist from Haaretz, Akiva Eldar, with a prominent settler leader, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed. As a result, followers of Melamed will learn about Eldar’s vision of peace, and Eldar’s readers will learn about Melamed’s.

The idea is not to change people’s minds, but to open them; not to push for compromise but to push for authentic expressions of peace. Compromise is more likely to occur when these expressions of peace are ingrained in people across the ideological spectrum.

Isaacs hopes to leverage the success of Talking Peace to raise the funds that will make the Center for the Advancement of Peace in Israel a full-time reality.

Ultimately, Isaacs knows that a similar process will need to happen on the Palestinian side for real peace to catch on. At least he’s not starting with illusions. He knows that it’s useless to charge full speed ahead with a peace train that is empty. For peace with the Palestinians to have any chance, it will need a multitude of peace riders from both sides to hop aboard, even if that takes a generation or two.

Until then, the Center for the Advancement of Peace in Israel will be advancing an idea that also deserves its share of attention: the peace process among the Jews.

David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine and OLAM.org. You can read his daily blog at suissablog.com and e-mail him at {encode=”suissa@olam.org” title=”suissa@olam.org”}.

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Charity: Effective

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman / Rob Eshman

Scott Harrison flipped open his MacBook Pro, spun it around and launched PowerPoint. The laptop sat in the middle of a conference table, and a dozen invited guests leaned in to see the photographs appearing on his screen. Harrison narrated.

The first photo showed Harrison, a lanky man with Midwestern good looks, then 28 years old, in a New York bar. He was a sandwiched between other denizens of the night, two women and a pony-tailed man, and his wrist was tilted unnaturally outward, so the photographer would catch the Toyota-sized Rolex he was wearing.

This was taken a few years ago, after Harrison had left his strict Christian upbringing to become a wealthy nightclub promoter in Manhattan, selling VIP access and $5,000 bottles of Cristal champagne. Harrison woke up not long after that picture was taken and decided there must be more to life. He joined a floating surgical ship called Mercy Ships, which delivers medical services to some of the neediest places on earth, and soon found himself face to face with the horrors of poverty and underdevelopment. At this point, the PowerPoint photos, taken from some 50,000 Harrison shot while on Mercy Corps, show young women with facial tumors the size of volleyballs. “After 40 minutes of surgery, they’re cured,” Harrison said. “They have their lives back.”

Harrison learned that 80 percent of the diseases in the world are caused by lack of clean water and sanitation. On the laptop, Harrison flashed a photo he’d taken of village women “purifying” water by straining it through folded-over pieces of old cloth. The end result is murky brown. The next slide showed a microscopic analysis of that same water, crawling with parasites and bacteria. Harrison learned that the cost of a simple well that can provide fresh water to an entire village of 250 people and eradicate water-borne diseases is $5,000 — the same as the price of a bottle of Cristal in one of his nightclubs. The cost worked out to about $20 per person per village. Harrison returned to New York and used his networks and talent to create an organization with one single-minded purpose — to build those wells.

And this is where the story becomes really interesting. Because if you check Charity Navigator, an organization that evaluates America’s charities, you’ll find that everybody and his mother, from American Jewish World Service to Matt Damon (really), is trying to do something about the world water crisis. But in just three years, Charity: Water has provided 1.5 million people with fresh, clean water in 17 countries through 2,500 water projects. It has raised $21 million from 100,000 donors and effectively raised awareness of the water crisis among millions of Americans. “[Charity: Water] is doing it faster, better and cheaper than anyone else,” former Charity Navigator CEO Trent Stamp wrote. “It’s one of the best groups I’ve ever seen. And quite frankly, in this job, I’ve seen a lot of groups.”

So this isn’t just a story about water and Scott Harrison’s redemption; it’s about how to address a desperate need in today’s world. Harrison’s polished PowerPoint presentation is an object lesson in effective contemporary philanthropy — which is why, though neither he nor his organization is Jewish, the people who gathered to hear him last week were rabbis and leaders of local Jewish agencies. The man has a lot to teach us.

He boiled down his message on how to quickly create an effective charity to three points:

Create Trust.

Harrison found that most of his friends didn’t believe charities use their money in the way they promised. So Harrison resolved that Charity: Water would use every donor dollar given to dig wells, to dig wells. He created two bank accounts, one for the organization’s low overhead, sponsored by a handful of private donors and foundations, the other for actual projects.

Prove It.

His friends wanted to see how their money was being used. Harrison used GPS technology and Google Earth to show each project from the start. It’s an emotionally satisfying way to “close the loop” between a donor in Kansas and the well she funded in Ethiopia.

Brand Excellence.

Harrison’s models weren’t other charities but his generation’s most famous brands, like Nike and Apple. “I didn’t want to create the best Web site in the nonprofit world,” Harrison said. “I wanted to create the best Web site in the world.” Charity: Water has used top Hollywood talent (donated) to create captivating PSAs and viral Web-based marketing campaigns. His goal is not to own the charity market, but to solve the water problem — and that will require an exponential leap.

“We’ve solved one-thousandth of the problem,” Harrison said. “We need to raise $2 billion in the next 10 years. That’s a 60 percent ramp-up — that’s Facebook or Google.”

When he finished talking, a good many people in the room were ready to help him — passion aligned with purpose and competence is an aphrodisiac in the nonprofit world.

One of Harrison’s final slides showed a group of villagers surrounding a well-digging drill. On screen, the PowerPoint slide suddenly starts moving, becomes a short film clip. Water gushes from a pipe and sprays the villagers, the cameraman — the world turns wet, and a huge cheer erupts.

“It’s awesome when you hit water 300 feet down,” Harrison said. “It’s fun to take pictures of.”

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How Jewy is Seth Rogen’s Green Hornet?

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized / Adam Wills

Seth Rogen tends to play characters who closely resemble … well, Seth Rogen. So does that make his modern take on Britt Reid—the masked vigilante newspaper publisher at the center of “The Green Hornet”—a Jewish action hero?

“Actually, Tom Wilkinson [who plays James Reid, Britt Reid’s father] is decidedly not Jewish,” Rogen told GeekHeeb at Comic-Con. “The Green Hornet is half-Jewish at best.”

Still, Rogen says real life does help inspire his Britt Reid, especially at the beginning of the action-comedy directed by Michel Gondry.

“We really wanted to show the journey of a guy from being very unheroic to ultimately being a hero. And so in the very unheroic parts of the movie I think I was able to inject a lot of my own personality in. And as the character evolves, he becomes more of what you would consider the traditional heroic type,” he said.

Rogen traces the inspiration for his big-screen “Green Hornet,” which co-stars Christoph Waltz and Cameron Diaz, back to his youth in Vancouver. After an episode of the campy 1960s “Batman,” Rogen and Evan Goldberg, his childhood friend/writing partner, would watch the 1966 “Green Hornet” series, starring Van Williams as Britt Reid and Bruce Lee as Kato.

“We wanted to write a movie about a hero and a sidekick and the relationship between them, and explore that. We just realized ‘The Green Hornet’ was the perfect movie to do that with, because of how famous Kato is in relation to the Green Hornet,” said Rogen, who describes himself as a big fan of Bruce Lee.

But calling Kato a sidekick in this “Green Hornet,” scheduled to open Jan. 14, is a bit of misnomer. In the script by Rogen and Goldberg, Kato (Jay Chou) is equal – if not superior – to Britt Reid.

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Remembering Ebi: Why we fled Iran

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Cover Story, Iran / Karmel Melamed

“I will never forget when I first saw his body — they shot him with one bullet at point-blank range in his heart,” my father, George Melamed, shared with me a few weeks ago, reflecting on his friend — and brother-in-law’s brother — Ebrahim (Ebi) Berookhim, who was executed in an Iranian prison on July 31, 1980, at the age of 30. For the past 30 years, my father has rarely spoken of this young Jewish man’s killing and the circumstances that propelled our family’s abrupt flight from Iran. During these past three decades, he’s tried to forget how Ebi was unjustly accused of being an Israeli and American spy, then ruthlessly murdered by Iran’s radical Islamic regime.

Yet as Ebi’s 30th yahrzeit approached this month, my parents, our relatives and some local Iranian Jews who knew this successful young Jewish businessman finally opened up to me about this tragedy that completely transformed all of our lives.

With news of the Iranian government’s pursuit of nuclear weapons continually filling today’s airwaves, the story of Ebi’s killing serves as a stark reminder to us all of the continuing brutality and illogical nature of the ayatollahs’ regime in Iran. The Iranian government’s inhumane practice of random arrests and imprisonment of innocent individuals continues to this day: On July 31, 2009, the same date that Ebi died but 29 years later, three American hikers were randomly taken hostage in Iran for mistakenly crossing a border; they remain unfairly imprisoned. Last year, Roxana Saberi, an Iranian American journalist based in Tehran, was arrested on false charges of espionage — she was one of the lucky ones; after immense pressure from abroad, the Iranian authorities released her.

Ebi, my relative, wasn’t so lucky. And the pain of losing him continues to haunt our family three decades later. The person closest to Ebi during the final months of his life was his elder sister, Shaheen Makhani, who today is a businesswoman and grandmother living in Santa Monica. I met with her and her family earlier this month, and they wept silently as they told me their story, speaking publicly for the first time about Ebi and his tragic demise.

“He was four years younger than me. We were very close, and I loved him,” Shaheen told me. “He had just returned from America after getting his degree, and he had also completed his mandatory military service in the Iranian army. He had his whole future ahead of him.”

Shaheen said Ebi’s problems started with the beginning of Iran’s Islamic revolution, in early 1979, when the Berookhim family’s five-star Royal Gardens hotel in Tehran was confiscated by the newly formed Islamic regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini. Nearly all of his family had already fled Iran for the United States in the prior months, but Ebi remained behind. One day, armed thugs of the regime overran the hotel and quickly blindfolded him. They took him to the Khasr prison in Tehran on trumped-up charges of being an American and Israeli spy.

“We knew they had arrested and imprisoned Ebi in order to get at our family’s other assets, and therefore it was not easy to get him out of prison,” Shaheen said. “It was a nightmare because we didn’t know what they were going to do with Ebi.”

I recently discovered that while Ebi was in Khasr prison, he befriended other Jews who also were unjustly being held captive, including Behrooz Meimand, now a 64-year-old insurance salesman living in Los Angeles. Meimand told me recently that “until the last day we were in the Khasr prison, Ebi and I were together, and he often rested his head in my lap and wept — I felt as if he was like my younger brother, and I tried to comfort him during the difficult days.”

Ebi’s sister Shaheen said that two months after her brother was captured, she was finally able to get him released from prison, but only after paying what she said were ridiculously large bribes and other payments to the prison officials.

Each and every one of Ebi’s family members and friends whom I spoke with said they urged Ebi to escape from Iran after his release from prison, but he responded negatively to them all.

My father recalled one conversation he had with Ebi after a Shabbat dinner following Ebi’s release: “I told him to get the hell out of Iran because these people in the government had a case against him and wanted his family’s properties — but he responded, ‘No, no, no … my family and I are innocent. We didn’t do anything wrong or illegal. Why should I leave?’ ”

This mistake of remaining in Iran proved fatal for Ebi. But he didn’t see what was coming. Shaheen said that, in the months after Ebi’s first arrest, he and his 82-year-old father, Eshagh Berookhim, voluntarily visited the infamous Evin prison, located just north of Tehran, because they believed promises the Iranian officials had made to them — that their hotel would be returned when they agreed to present their case at the prison. Then, one morning, in April 1980, during one of these voluntary visits, the Evin prison authorities arrested Ebi again and sent him to prison. This time, his elderly father was arrested with him.

Over the next nearly four months, Shaheen worked tirelessly to free them. Then, early one morning, she turned on the radio and was devastated to learn that her beloved brother had been executed at the prison earlier that same day.

Around the same time, my father heard the news from a co-worker, and he, too, was shocked. Without hesitation, my father and three other Jews risked their lives by going to the prison morgue to retrieve Ebi’s body because most of his family was no longer in Iran to give him a kosher burial. Ebi’s father was still being held.

“It was dangerous at the time to get his body because the authorities would ask what relationship you have with the infidel who was executed or demand to see your identification. And they could create all sorts of future problems for you,” my father told me. “But I nevertheless went with a few others, because Ebi was a close friend of mine and a family member whom we could not allow to be buried in a mass grave with the other executed political prisoners.”

The regime’s prison officials refused to release Ebi’s body until a substantial payment was made to “cover the costs for the bullet used in the execution,” he said.

My father and the other Jewish men paid and were eventually given Ebi’s bloody body. My father recalled: “Ebi’s body was still warm while he lay in the mortuary at the Jewish cemetery; it had been desecrated with markers, and the soles of his feet showed signs that he had been tortured with steel wiring.” He also said, “You could tell he was shot at point-blank range, because the opening was a half an inch in diameter on the front of his body near his heart, and the hole on his back side was two or three inches wide.”

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Mormon Proxy Immersions for the Dead

Leave a Comment / News / Mark Paredes

Here is a slightly edited version of my essay that appears on Menachem Wecker’s Houston Chronicle blog. Several readers have asked me to address this topic, and I am happy to do so. The essay is longer than previous posts by reason of necessity; this is not a question that can be answered in a few sentences. The last paragraph, written in a tachlis style, properly frames the issue.

MW: As someone who is involved in Mormon-Jewish relations and understanding, what are the Jews who take issue with baptisms of the dead missing? How well do you think the LDS community understands the Jewish concerns about the rite?

ME: Given the rich history of Mormon support for Jews, along with the active outreach to the Jewish community by Mormons in Los Angeles and other cities, I am happy to report that this issue has not been a barrier to day-to-day interaction between the two communities. In Los Angeles, a Mormon has emceed the Israel Festival (the nation’s largest) for three years, a Mormon conducted the bilingual Yom Hazikaron (Israeli Memorial Day) ceremony for the city’s Israeli
community (also the nation’s largest), Mormons have worked or are
working at several leading Jewish institutions, there is an ongoing
LDS-Jewish theological dialogue between a stake president and a
Conservative rabbi, the LDS Church has hosted receptions at the Jewish
Federation and Israeli Consulate General, and we have an excellent
working relationship with Jewish genealogical organizations. In
addition, joint LDS-Jewish presentations have been held in many U.S.
and Canadian cities, Mormons work to preserve Jewish cemeteries in
several European countries, etc.

That said, I have always believed that those Jews who seek an
explanation of this practice are entitled to one. This conviction was
reinforced during my tour of Auschwitz last fall. After visiting a
place where one million Jews were killed because they were Jewish, it
is very easy to understand the outrage felt by their descendants upon
learning that a handful of Mormons continue to defy their Church’s
policy by inappropriately submitting names of Holocaust victims and
other unrelated Jews for Mormon temple rites. In order to do this
issue justice, a little background explanation is necessary.

First a little theology. Mormons believe that we lived as spirits with
God before we came to earth, we believe that we live here on earth
now, and we believe that we will live again in the next life (olam
ha-ba in Hebrew). In each period of existence, we have to make choices
that determine the eternal progress of our souls. In the pre-earth
life, we had to choose to follow God and His plan of salvation, which
involved sending us to this world to be tested. [A third of the
spirits chose to reject this plan, so their progress was halted and
they will not have the privilege of inhabiting a mortal body]. In this
life, we choose every day whether to follow God and keep His
commandments as we understand them. In the next life, we will also be
called upon to make choices. Those who did not have an opportunity to
accept the Gospel of Jesus Christ on earth will be able to do so in
the next life. If they choose to do so—a voluntary choice—then
they will need to be baptized and have other ordinances performed for
them in order to continue their spiritual progress. Ordinances for the
dead can only be performed in temples by living proxies. If the
spirits in the next life do not accept the gospel, than the ordinances
performed in the temples will not be applied to them.

Three points need to be made here: 1) Mormons are required to seek out
their own ancestors and perform temple ordinances for them (including
proxy immersions). They have not been asked to perform these
ordinances for others’ ancestors; 2) These ordinances are not
optional. It is as necessary for a Mormon to perform temple ordinances
for his deceased relatives as it is for a religious Jew to circumcise
his newborn son; 3) Temple ordinances do NOT confer Church membership
on the deceased. Our members need to give consent in order to be
baptized, and the dead cannot give their consent, at least not in a
way that can be objectively measured by us. Therefore, we do NOT
consider them to be members of the LDS Church and do NOT list them on
our membership rolls. The prayer that is recited during proxy
immersions contains language that differs slightly from that used in
baptisms for the living, and it is highly inaccurate to refer to proxy
immersions as “posthumous conversions,” “making Mormons of the dead,”
“baptizing Jews into Mormonism,” etc.

I always use the term “proxy
immersions” to refer to baptisms for the dead, both because it is more
accurate (since not all spirits will accept the ordinances, not all of
them are true baptisms) and because it avoids giving non-members the
impression that the practice confers membership in the church (as do
other baptisms throughout Christianity).

Now for a little history. In the early 1990s, it was discovered that 8
Mormons – out of a total of 12 million at the time – had submitted
tens of thousands of names of Jewish Holocaust victims for temple
ordinances. This was obviously contrary to Church policy, and
concerned Jewish leaders met with LDS authorities to discuss the
matter. In 1995 a memorandum of understanding was signed between the
two groups, and a letter from LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley
asking members not to submit names of Holocaust victims was read from
the pulpit of every LDS congregation worldwide. Mormons agree with
Jews that Holocaust victims should not have temple ordinances
performed for them, except in rare cases where a victim is the direct
ancestor of a living Mormon. Jewish leaders agreed to inform the
Church of improper name submissions, and the Church in turn promised
to delete those names from the temple ordinance database. In addition,
the Church has updated its software for the submission of names for
temple ordinances in recent years to make it harder to submit names of
non-relatives, and all of our family history centers throughout the
world are aware of the Church’s policy on submissions of
non-relatives, including Jews.

No one thinks that more than a handful of Mormons (out of nearly 14
million today) continue to defy the Church’s policy on name
submissions. In other words, we have 99.9999% compliance. While the
LDS Church is hierarchical in nature, it is not a police state. If a
rebellious member insists on submitting the name of a Jewish
non-relative for temple ordinances, his efforts will likely be
successful. When the Church is made aware of the improper submission,
it can and does act to remove it from the ordinances database.
Indeed, this is a special promise made only to Jews, though others
have requested it as well. After all, Mormons should not be submiting
the names of any non-relatives—whether Catholic, Buddhist,
Brazilian or Zulu—for temple ordinances. However, if a Jewish name
is submitted improperly, the name will be removed if a request is
made. This unique arrangement is a testament to the respect and love
that Mormons feel for the Jewish community. Our leaders have had to
walk a fine line between accommodating Jewish leaders’ wishes while
affirming our obligation to perform temple ordinances for our kindred
dead, and I think that they have largely succeeded.

I also believe that most Mormons are sensitive to Jews’ concerns on this issue,
though some Church members do wonder why someone who doesn’t believe
in the temple ordinances, a next life, or (in some cases) God Himself
would care what Mormons do in their temples. As LDS-Jewish cooperation
increases and mutual respect develops, I have no doubt that their
sensitivity will be heightened to Jewish concerns. I also suspect that
even those Jews who demand 100% compliance by Mormons will come to
“agree to disagree” with their philo-Semitic Mormon friends.

A final word to those Jews who insist on bringing up this issue whenever Jewish-Mormon cooperation is mentioned: you have lost the support of mainstream Protestant churches on the Jewish state. Palestinian liberation theology is making
steady inroads in the Evangelical community (e.g., Holy Land Trust). Hate crimes against Jews are on the rise in Europe and in other parts of the world. Most Jews in this country marry outside the faith. Most Christians worldwide believe that the Abrahamic covenant is dead. Israel is facing the prospect of a nuclear Iran and its aggressive proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. With all of these serious issues (and much more) for Jews to contend with in today’s world, the misbehavior of a few Mormons, as offensive as it may be to you and to us, shouldn’t even be on the radar screen of a committed Jew. I am so concerned about anti-Semitism that I regularly travel around the country and the world at my expense to shore up non-Jewish support of Jews and Judaism. I am confident that your beautiful faith, one that has survived for thousands of years,
will not be threatened by the ordinances of a faith whose beliefs you do not share. I understand deeply your resentment, but I tell you as a friend that you have much bigger theological fish to fry right now. If anything is a threat to contemporary Judaism, it’s apathy, not Mormon rites. If a recent survey showing that a majority of non-Orthodox Jews under 35 would not regard the destruction of Israel as a personal tragedy is not a call to action, I don’t know what is.

I am grateful for the opportunity to answer this question, and would welcome correspondence on this issue.

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Webcasts: Insights into Emmanuel affair and Halevi rocks with Israeli music

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Multimedia / Karmel Melamed

Yesterday the Los Angeles participants of the Sephardic Educational Center’s summer seminar in Jerusalem heard lectures from two prominent Israeli journalists Jonah Mandel and Yossi Klein Halevi about different aspects of Sephardic life in Israel today.

Mandel, who has been covering the contentious Emmanuel affair during the last three years for the Jerusalem Post. He spoke about how religious Sephardic Jews viewed the case that involves religious Sephardic Jewish children from the “Slonim” sect in the small and poor Israeli city of Emmanuel who were allegedly victims of racial discrimination by religious Ashkenazi faculty members of their “Bet Yacov” school. I caught up with Mandel afterwards and he shed light on the status of religious Sephardic Jews in Israel in this interview…

Later in the evening, we were joined by Israeli author and journalist Yossi Klein Halevi who revealed the tremendous impact Sephardic music and culture has had on Israeli rock n’ roll since it’s birth in 1967. Halevi “rocked” out with by playing various Sephardic influenced Israeli rock n’ roll songs for our group. This is video footage I captured of Halevi discussing the impact of Iranian-Israeli rock singer Meir Banai on contemporary Israeli rock music and his most recent hit song “Lecha Eli” which is originally a religious song typically sung during Yom Kippur…

Webcasts: Insights into Emmanuel affair and Halevi rocks with Israeli music Read More »

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Webcasts: Insights into Emmanuel affair and Halevi rocks with Israeli music

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