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“Hey, Mormons — leave dead Jews alone!”

“Hey, Mormons — leave dead Jews alone!”

Last updated on: December 28, 2017 at 12:47 pm by Dan Peterson

“Hey, Mormons — leave dead Jews alone!” 2017-12-28T12:47:33-07:00 Dan Peterson

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The Accra Ghana Temple (LDS Media Library)

I realize that this is a thankless task, and that it can only serve to confirm the position of those who already agree with me and to further inflame those who already don’t. I recognize, too, that doing so will expose me to inevitable accusations of insensitivity and disrespect and even, from my worst critics, of anti-Semitism. But I’m going to comment once again — see also my prior entry, titled “On performing baptisms for Jewish Holocaust victims” — on this profoundly misguided article by Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin:

“Hey, Mormons — leave dead Jews alone!”

First of all, there’s his fundamental factual error:

As any even minimally informed member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would have happily explained to Rabbi Salkin, we believe that vicarious Mormon baptisms for the dead offer the choice to deceased persons — whom we believe to survive as free, conscious, personal agents — of accepting or rejecting the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we do not presume to know what choice they make.

Thus, contrary to Rabbi Salkin’s article, there is literally no way in Mormon doctrine for anybody to be an “unwitting” or “unwilling” member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nobody in the Church teaches that such vicarious baptisms “effectively make the dead posthumous Mormons.” No Mormons “claim our [Jewish] dead as their own.” We do not enroll those for whom vicarious baptisms have been performed as members of the Church. Accordingly, describing a “researcher [who] comes to believe that Anne Frank was actually Mormon” simply because an ordinance was performed on her behalf as “less than competent” would be an absurd understatement. Such a “researcher” could not possibly be taken seriously by anybody who actually knows anything about the subject.

Second, there’s Rabbi Salkin’s tone:

He’s free, of course, to say (as he does) that he dislikes our theology and our practices. Nobody is forced to be tolerant or respectful. But I was saddened to see his description as “contemptible” of a central element of our theology and a vitally important aspect of our practice. I cannot imagine myself using such language to characterize any fundamental teaching or mitzvah of Judaism nor of any other significant religious tradition. I would never, for example, describe Catholic masses or prayers for the dead as “contemptible.” It is “a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sins,” says the very Jewish book of 2 Maccabees (12:46).

Some have derided our practice of vicarious temple baptisms as “silly.” Others have denounced it as “unbiblical.” That’s their right, of course, as it is our right to disagree with them. (Although I would never deride as “silly” the Jewish practice of saying kaddish “for the merit of the departed soul of one’s father or mother.”)

Some have suggested that vicarious baptisms for the dead should be legally banned — which proposes an extension of government power whose tyranny would be absolutely breathtaking in its implications. Would such people favor the prohibition of requiem masses? Are Mozart’s Requiem and Verdi’s Requiem “contemptible” and “silly”? Are such composers jailbait?

Here is the text of Pie Jesu from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem:

Pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem
Pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu, pie Jesu
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem
Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei, Agnus Dei
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona eis requiem, dona eis requiem
Sempiternam
Sempiternam
Requiem

Merciful Jesus, merciful Jesus, merciful Jesus, merciful Jesus
Father, who takes away the sins of the world
Grant them rest, grant them rest
Merciful Jesus, merciful Jesus, merciful Jesus, merciful Jesus
Father, who takes away the sins of the world
Grant them rest, grant them rest
Lamb of God, Lamb of God, Lamb of God, Lamb of God
Father, who takes away the sins of the world
Grant them rest, grant them rest
everlasting
everlasting
Rest

Here is the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko (Анна Нетребко) performing Pie Jesu:

A vicarious baptism offered to the dead is no different, in principle, from a prayer or a mass intended to benefit or implore blessing upon the dead.

Are the sentiments expressed in Pie Jesu “contemptible” or “silly”? Should Ms. Netrebko be in jail?

Should police patrol Catholic churches to ensure that no such masses be said, to guarantee that no candles be lit on behalf of the deceased?

Finally, Rabbi Salkin would have been wise to listen to the judgment of Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, the former national director of interreligious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, who monitors the LDS database on behalf of the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors (and who receives a monthly report from the Church on submissions of Holocaust victims, including updates on how each case is resolved — a gesture of respect to Jewish sensibilities that, in my opinion, is strikingly generous).

Rabbi Greenebaum defends the Church against such critics as Rabbi Salkin, pointing out that the number of names found by the anti-Mormon zealot Helen Radkey after months and months of work is “infinitesimal” and declaring that the church has “an astonishingly good record.”

“I find it sort of extraordinary that someone is still wanting to say that the church is not acting in good faith,” Greenebaum comments, “because I think it is acting in extraordinarily good faith.”

(For Rabbi Greenebaum’s comments, see here.)

Is the process perfect? No. Do unauthorized submissions still get through? Yes. (And I don’t rule out the possibility that they’re the result of deliberate actions by the agent-provocateur Helen Radkey and her accomplices.) But what process in this life is perfect? Roughly 130 genetic mutations occur with every human conception. Between 500-1000 airline fatalities happen each year. For every million people vaccinated against influenza, one or two cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome appear. In 2016, there were approximately 12.5 deaths per billion vehicle miles.

That’s life in a fallen world.

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