Awesome! I get to piss off the Mormons again: Every time I post about the Mormons posthumously baptizing Jews, one of them manages to read my blog and post an angry comment. So here it is: The LDS say they’re going to stop baptizing Jews that died in the Holocaust. They’ve said that before. They’ve failed every time. This time, even the Utah press thinks it’s not gonna happen. Okay, Mormons, come on back and tell me how a) If the church says they’ll stop, they’ll stop and b) what’s the big deal about posthumous baptism, anyway? (Psst—it is extremely offensive to Jews that you are pretend-converting Jews to Mormonism those who died because they were Jews.) There, that oughta do it.
Most biased anti-Israel headline of the week: Time magazine wins the award with “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.” The headline sucks. But the article is interesting, as it actually gives some Israeli viewpoints. I doubt its conclusion, however. I think Israelis care very much about peace. They just don’t believe the Palestinians want it.
Liberal blogger anti-Semitism: We’ve seen this over the years, but now there’s an actual study on anti-Semitic cartoons on progressive blogs. Apparently, the study perused Indymedia sites. Um. I no longer even bother pointing out the anti-Semitism of Indymedia sites. It’s like saying the sun rises in the east.
Hey, stop reminding us about our part in the extermination of six million Jews: A Jewish French teacher has been fired for teaching about the Holocaust. Yes, really.
A copy of the report, seen by AFP, accuses Pederzoli of “lacking distance, neutrality and secularism” in teaching the Holocaust and of manipulating her charges through a process of “brain-washing”.
Hm. Talking about religion during a course that teaches about people being killed for their religion—yeah, I can totally see how you’d want to teach about the Holocaust in a neutral fashion. Because it was such a cut-and-dried issue, the attempted murder of all of Europe’s Jews. Ah, France. You never fail to disappoint.
Meryl: As Jews, I think that we ought to just ignore the Mormon practice of baptism for the dead.
It is official LDS teaching that the spirits of dead people for whom baptisms are performed have the freedom to choose whether to accept the baptism or not. And in Jewish teaching, someone’s performing a baptism for a dead person is just a meaningless act — it has no effect on the dead person’s religion or salvation. So both Mormons and Jews can agree that performing a baptism for a deceased Jew is not going to turn that Jew into a Mormon involuntarily.
Basically, Jews have enough real problems — like the other three items mentioned in your post — that we can do without worrying about the “baptism for the dead” issue.
Oh, jeez, not this again.
In all my history at Wizbang, the one time I brought up the proxy baptisms generated more passionate arguing and heat than any three other topics. MAN, did that blow up in my face. And I had no idea that it would happen. I had to shut down comments TWICE on it, and the third piece I didn’t even open them.
And here I am again, considering sticking my (ahem) in the blender again and writing about it…
Sigh. Meryl, the things you do to me…
J.
@Joshua, yeah, I could ignore it—but now it’s become fun. I can imagine my father’s reaction to the baptism if some Mormon spirit came up to him, offering to make him a Christian. I think he’d say: “Fuck you, you anti-Semitt” (that was the way he pronounced anti-Semite).
He worked with people who didn’t like Jews very much. So when there was downtime at the loading docks at Pabst, he drew a swastika on a board and practiced throwing his knife at it. He said it really pissed off the “anti-Semitts.”
Yeah, that’s where I get it from, mostly.
@Jay: See above.