Who decides?

One of the blogs I have on my sidebar is by Mark Paredes, a Mormon blogger at the Jewish Journal who writes about Mormon-Jewish issues. I was going through some of his recent archives and found an article from last month in which Paredes talked about Mormon-Jewish dialogue. That's all well and good, and Parades makes some excellent points about how to do interfaith communication right (for starters, if you want to understand what members of a religion believe, your first step should be to ask members of the faith to speak for themselves, not their critics). However I couldn't help but notice a paragraph where Paredes mentioned the one continual sticking point between our communities:

I deliberately left out any mention of proxy temple ordinances in my speech, which Rabbi Wolpe was quick to note. I took the opportunity, which I will also avail myself of here, to announce that I will no longer discuss the proxy ordinances issue in future presentations. Quite frankly, I’m tired of hearing about it. A small group of Jewish leaders has blown this issue way out of proportion for 20 years; even they decided last year to move on to agenda items that actually affect living Jews, instead of worrying about what a few disobedient Mormons are doing in their own temples. I’ve blogged several times on this issue, and don’t plan to spend more time or effort explaining it. Instead, I will refer curious Jews to the rabbis at the Simon Wiesenthal Center so that they can tell them by what authority they are authorized to speak on behalf of the dead and explain just why they felt it was necessary to carry on this campaign for two decades with the help of an anti-Mormon researcher.

This is where I start to lose respect for Paredes, because while it is true there are plenty of other meaningful and important topics to discuss about the Mormon-Jewish relationship, the fact that Paredes has decided that he's sick of talking about this is galling as well as troubling. I thought part of the point of Paredes' talks is to promote dialogue; so I'm rather confused about the logic of barring proxy baptisms as a legitimate discussion item just because Paredes is sick of the topic. Guess what, Mark? SO ARE WE. The reality is the reason this continues to be a sore point is because members of your community keep doing it; your response should be to encourage your church to better police its members rather than chastise Jews for daring to be offended that you continue, after 20 years, to apparently not care that you're doing something lots of us find offensive.

At his suggestion, I took the time to look up some of Paredes' old posts on the issue. Not surprisingly, they weren't all that satisfactory. Parades repeatedly points out that Mormons believe that their relatives are required to have proxy baptisms, and then usually pats the church on the back for being so magnanimous to exempt "Jewish Holocaust victims," even though other people would like their relatives' names taken out as well:

No one thinks that more than a handful of Mormons (out of nearly 14million 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 besuccessful. 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.

How big of you, Mark. The fact that you guys have decided to give a medium-sized crap about Jews who died between 1939 and 1945 really makes me feel better in the light of the tiny crap you give about Jews who died in all other years (to say nothing of Catholics, Buddhists, or Zulus who lived or died at any time). Wow, too bad my various ancestors who were baptized had to go and die in New York instead of Auschwitz like their cousins. Just our bad luck, I suppose.

Every time the issue is raised, Paredes repeats the party line. Only a handful of Mormons are doing it, the LDS leadership wants to respect Jewish wishes, they can only do so much, etc. He also tries to skirt the issue by pointing out that Mormons perform other rites with dead people's names that people usually aren't as vocal about:

When I first started discussing posthumous temple rites with Jews, I quickly noticed that they only raised objections to the ordinance known to Mormons as “baptisms for the dead.” Even though Mormons perform several ordinances for the deceased, Jews focused almost exclusively on that one. [I have never heard a Jew object to the eternal marriage by proxy of a husband and wife who perished in the Holocaust, for example].

Funny thing, Mark, that doesn't make me feel better. At all.

Paredes raises this point as a way of saying that the LDS proxy baptism doesn't mean that the person has actually "become" Mormon, just that it's been offered. But by issue is that the very act of using the person in a religious ritual is perceived, and felt, as a violation. The fact that the Mormons don't see it that way doesn't change this, and the fact that some people think it's not a big deal doesn't change it, either. If someone does something offensive to someone else, it is offensive. You as the offender do not decide when it stops being offensive. You can either work to stop it, or you can be honest and say you don't care. But you most certainly don't get to be mad when we keep bringing it up. The continued insistence by Mormons that proxy baptisms don't matter and that we have no right to be bothered by it, bothers me more than the rites themselves. It's another layer of theological arrogance, best shown in an article from nine months ago when Paredes attacked Elie Wiesel and the Wiesenthal Center:

Last week the charade involving a group of leaders in the Jewish community and the LDS Church’s practice of proxy immersions reached a new low. Elie Wiesel, one of the towering moral figures of our age, found out that his father and grandfather’s names had been submitted by a disobedient member of the church for temple ordinances. The church quickly canceled the submissions, but not before Mr. Wiesel had called on the church (via the Huffington Post) to stop performing temple ordinances for all Jews, not just Holocaust victims. He then asked Mitt Romney to “speak to his own church” about the issue. With all due respect to Mr. Wiesel (and considerable respect is due), he would probably do more good by suggesting to certain Jewish leaders that they mind their own business.

Apparently Jews are only allowed to be offended by topics vetted by Paredes. Who knew?

In the early 90s, a group of Jewish leaders approached the church after discovering that a few members had submitted – in violation of church rules – names of Holocaust victims for LDS temple ordinances. Although these ordinances do NOT confer membership in the church, the leaders claimed to be offended.

They claimed to be offended. Apparently in Paredes' worldview, other people don't have the right or autonomy to actually have their own opinions when it comes to his church.

Had I been in charge of the LDS delegation to the initial [1995] meeting, it would have been a short one. I would have started off by asking the leaders what authority they had to represent dead Jews. The answer? None. 

Stupid question that deflects the issue. Obviously no one can "truly" speak for the dead; they're not here. However one can look to the beliefs of a community, of families, and in some cases, of the dead themselves to guess what they might have wanted-- assuming that this is your actual goal. If your goal is find ways to justify behavior that members of that community find offensive, then you play stupid games like this. In the Jewish community, this issue has always been framed as one of a lack of respect-- a lack of respect of Jewish beliefs, and a lack of respect for what the dead most likely would have wanted. Paredes' response exemplifies the Mormon response: we don't care what you think. In Paredes' world, Wiesel has NO RIGHT to be offended that his father and grandfather, who were clearly devoted to Judaism and as far as he knows had zero interest in converting to anything or being used as part of another religion's rituals, were used in this way. He's simply not allowed. Just like Daniel Pearl's family isn't allowed to be offended on his behalf.

Here's a question: what authority do Mormons have to do anything with dead Jews? None other than the authority they claim, which is exactly the same argument Jews claim. The difference is that as the descendants of the people whose names the Mormons are using in their ceremonies and who are part of the same community as the dead, it seems to me that if anyone has more authority to speak for the dead, it's the Jews and not the Mormons. Paredes skirts the issue by saying the Jews are being arrogant by presuming to speak for their own relatives. As I've said several times, the best comparison I can think of to proxy baptism is peeing on someone's grave. Who's to say that your great-grandfather wouldn't have been totally into urine play?

Let's turn it around: Hey Mark! I've got a new religion that has some special rites I'm supposed to do. Yeah, and I have a quota to fill, so I'm going to need some help from your family on this. Oh come on, what's the big deal? For all you know, maybe your grandparents secretly wanted to be exhumed, put into a glass casket, and used in an Aztec-themed rap video? You know, if you keep complaining about this, I'm going to start feeling persecuted!

The only leg Paredes has to stand on in this whole discussion is a claim he makes regarding the 1995 agreement between a Jewish delegation and the LDS church:

the church offered at that time to “freeze” names of all known Holocaust victims for purposes of temple work if the Jewish leaders would agree. Unfortunately, they chose the second option of taking upon themselves the responsibility of notifying the church whenever they discovered the submission of a Holocaust victim’s name. The Jewish leaders knew from the beginning that the option they chose would mean that many names, and sometimes the same names, would continue to pop up in the database. In a stunning moment of candor, someone with detailed knowledge of the early discussions acknowledged to me that one of the reasons that the Jewish leaders chose this option was so they could continue to hold church leaders’ feet to the fire on this issue and eventually reach their ultimate goal: to have the LDS Church declare that Judaism was sufficient for salvation, and temple ordinances were not necessary for Jews.

Sorry Mormons, you may feel burned because some leaders you worked with 20 years ago suggested that we'd settle for you "exempting" Jews who died within a six-year time period. But, yeah, the truth is that we do not want you doing anything with our dead, Holocaust or otherwise, because it bothers the hell out of us, and it's not ok, and it's never going to be ok, and if you want us to shut up about it, then you're going to need to stop doing it, and if you're not going to stop, then we're entitled to complain about it. If you fell for that then it's your own fault.

Rabbis Hier and Cooper have no standing whatsoever to demand that a church change its religious practices because they’re offended by them. They tried that with the Catholics (e.g., the resurrected Good Friday prayer), and were politely told to mind their own business. 

Sorry Mark, you're missing the point. If people are legitimately offended something in another religion, they're entitled to continue to make noise about it. That doesn't mean the other religion is obligated to respond or change, but neither do you have the authority to stop your critics from talking about it. Additionally, the details here are substantially different from the Good Friday example. That's one prayer, it happens once a year, and it's a broad theological statement. The proxy baptism issue is deeply personal and is continually happening all the time.

There are 14 million Mormons, and in the idealized world of the SWC, computers at LDS genealogy centers would somehow be able to detect when even one of them is about to improperly submit a Jewish name for a temple ordinance. This is ridiculous, and they know it. I have a question for them: Why can’t they do something to address the problem of agunoth in the Orthodox community worldwide? Everyone knows that it’s outrageous, and rabbis throughout the world denounce husbands who refuse to grant divorces to their estranged Jewish wives. Why can’t Rabbis Hier and Cooper force every Orthodox husband to toe the line on marriages? Because the husbands have free will, that’s why. 

Funny thing, Mark: last I checked, the LSD church operates according to a hierarchy, whereas Judaism is historically, almost comically, decentralized. Furthermore, your ritual has become digitized. The LDS church owns the databases, they operate all the temples, and they perform the ceremonies. They could do a moratorium on proxy baptisms until their system is better centralized. They could establish new processes to ensure that LDS members who violate church agreements are punished for it. They could increase the burden of proof on people submitting names, requiring them to document their line of descent better. Perhaps most importantly, they actually could establish a "do not baptize" list, documenting every person they've had to take off, and ensuring that if someone tries to baptize them again it raises a red flag. You can do that with computers now. So it's not an issue of can't, it's an issue of won't. If they recognized this as a serious issue, these are some things they could do. Instead, they've told Jewish people who find names to contact them and they'll take them off the lists-- but only if they fall into the one specific category they've "exempted." That's it, even though Paredes admits that the only names that should be submitted, much less used in the ceremonies, are people with Mormon descendants. Is it any wonder some people don't think that's good enough?

The rabbis have also threatened LDS leaders with protests on more than one occasion unless their demands were met. This is a violation of both ethics and decency that is beneath the dignity of rabbis of their stature.  In spite of this persecution, Mormons can take consolation from the fact that Jews, even Holocaust victims, are still not exempted from the requirements of LDS temple ordinances. 

There you have it: in Paredes' world, when Jews complain or even threaten to protest, it constitutes persecution of Mormons. And people accuse Jews of having a victimization complex? Grow the hell up.

The reality is that the LDS church will probably not stop doing this, and so at a certain point you do need to figure out when to move on and how to build positive and productive relationships with other religious groups. But Paredes isn't doing himself any favors by silencing discussion on the topic by essentially saying that "it's not a big deal and you're not allowed to think it is, because I'm done talking about it."

Remember, the whole argument Paredes and the LDS church are trying to advance is that their church is incredibly pro-Jewish, believes in connecting with Jews, supports Israel and all the rest. Well you can't really say all that and demand all this credit for being such good friends with the Jews if when some Jews criticize you your reaction is to say, "I don't want to hear it!" and throw that same supposed friendship back in their face. You can't claim to be sensitive to Jewish feelings and concerns if your response to Elie Wiesel expressing hurt and pain at finding out that his father and grandfather were, in his eyes, at least, dishonored, is to dismiss him by calling him old and suggesting the problem is that he's senile and being taken advantage of by opportunists in the community. Yes, it couldn't possibly be that he has a point!

If Paredes wants to build bridges he needs to recognize that this will continue to be an issue among (some) Jews because we care about it. Paredes does not get to decide when or if Jews cease to care about it, and he most certainly is not in a position to dictate to the Jewish community how they "get" to feel. He can choose what he's willing to discuss publicly, but if he's looking for Jews to say this is ok, I have news for him: as someone affected by this issue, this is not and will never be ok with me. I do not appreciate you using my ancestors' names in any of your rituals, I do not think they would have appreciated it, and there is nothing you can say that will negate that feeling. Furthermore, removing the names, in my opinion, is not the solution. That's not what I want. What I want is for you to reform your procedures for these rituals and stop using non-Mormons' names in your rituals except for the tiny amount of cases where it is "required" by church doctrine. Until that happens, you can expect to keep hearing about it. Feel free to be pissed about it. I know I am.

Beating the FDLS

Shiksa Girlfriend and I were talking about the news that the Yearning for Zion children were being reunited with their families in Texas.

We were both frustrated at hearing about how the Texan and federal authorities screwed up the case, but we had some very different perspectives on how people should react after the fact.

First, I have to say that I was struck by some of the similarities between the YFZ ranch and Hasidic communities like Kiryas Joel and New Square. The interesting thing is that while both Haredim and FLDS have separatist worldviews, there seems to be less of a detachment from the real world among the Hasidim. Though the communities may be insular, they are closely hooked in to the outside world through two main mechanisms: economics, and politics. Whether through business or government assistance, the Hasidim cannot afford (literally) to have zero interaction with outsiders, and this also gives politicians and law enforcement some degree of leverage over the communities, if need be. Even though Kiryas Joel and New Square may not be totally open books to the police and government, there does not seem to be as much of a culture built up around keeping things from the authorities- as reflected in some past scandals ending in jail time for the accused. The Hasidim also are very motivated to grow their communities, which requires money and political favors, which makes it advantageous for them to be prominent in the political scene.

In contrast to this, the FLDS, in part due to their history vis-a-vis polygamy, are used to operating under the radar. Not only are they a separatist group, I would argue they are also partially Messianic or apocalyptic- not necessarily that they're going to specifically DO something, a-la Heaven's Gate or Branch Davidians, but rather that their conception of reality is focused far more on "the next step," which not only helps reinforce the cultural isolation of the group, it also makes it very hard to get reliable information about them.

I know that some people are taking this as an opportunity to take us all to task about being too quick to judge weird religions.

In America, we punish conduct, not belief systems. This is the simple fact forgotten by the judge who blessed the initial raids and who took custody of 463 children from their parents. There may well be criminals and child abusers in this community, but the state has to prove it, one by one.

There may be some legitimacy to this. I've certainly been troubled by seeing how quickly people started jumping on the bandwagon of "get the polygamists," especially when I started hearing conservatives using them as a starting point for bigger and better things.

While I agree with all of that--that the behavior and conduct is wrong, you could say the exact same thing about another compound dominated by an extremist religion whose middle-aged men have multiple wives, have sex and kids with underaged women, and are "programmed" to be abused. The compound is called "Dearbornistan" and the religion is Islam.
The only difference: While the behavior of the Jeffs'-associated polygamists is abhorrent, 19 of their fellow co-religionists didn't slaughter 3,000 Americans, and thousands more haven't tried and/or succeeded at other attacks. And millions of their fellow co-religionists haven't professed their love of those who vow destruction of America.
So, tell me, where should the FBI and the federal government be focusing its attention . . . Islamic America or the far minor and less threatening Warren Jeffs' America? They haven't even found the alleged 16-year-old who tipped off law enforcement and made the alleged complaint.
When Muslim women in Dearbornistan, some aged 12 and younger, have kids with 50-year-olds with several wives, authorities look the other way and say "it's okay because they're married 'in the eyes of the mosque,' and this is how it's done in their religion." There was once a statutory rape case involving an underaged Muslim girl who gave birth in Dearborn to the child of a Muslim man decades her senior. But that was the result--the case was dropped because "the mosque says it's okay." And there have been no other cases like it prosecuted in Dearborn.
Two very similar religions . . . two very different treatments by legions of federal agents and the law enforcement policy-makers from above.
I know who needs to be de-programmed and reprogrammed. And it's not just women in bonnets, gingham dresses, and braided, long hair in Texas.

Ugh.

Anyway, SG and I were saying that the real issue now is that the FLDS is likely going to go further underground, and, assuming that there actually was something really wrong going on there (which I highly suspect), it's going to be a lot harder to prove now.

SG's view of things was largely political and social; of having politicians and government officials at all levels basically start making it a lot harder for the group to exist off the radar- start passing and enforcing laws that force them to use doctors or funereal services off the ranch, for instance, so you can start keeping better track of who's who and where. I asked her if she didn't think it ironic she was advocating the same questionable tactics the pro-lifers use on Planned Parenthood. She said that as far as she was concerned the seriousness of the crimes justified making things "a little tougher" for them, if nothing else.

I take a different approach. I see this as a law enforcement issue. Assuming that even a fraction of what the police, etc., thought was going on there was true, they need to start looking at the FLDS, particularly the YFZ group, as an organized crime organization. This doesn't mean you start kicking in doors a-la Elian Gonzales. In fact, the exact opposite. The whole reason this thing blew up was because of a dearth of intelligence. They need to monitor the group, they need to infiltrate it, they need to know who's who and what's happening in there. They should be consulting with mainstream Mormons who might have a reason to help the authorities. They should be looking at the fact that the FLDS is an organization that spans several states, making it even harder to track. They should have files on dissidents, informants, etc. Among other things, this would give a sense of purpose and identity to the many "Lost Boys" that are gradually growing into a sizeable sub-group of the FLDS. Eventually, they might even be able to split the organization by turning them on each other.

The law underestimated the FLDS last month. They can't afford to do so again. History has given us the tools and understanding to know how to combat large, spread-out criminal organizations. The FLDS may be harder to understand than the Mafia. But the same logic applies: until you know more about them, you won't be able to know how to beat them.

New Mormon Prez Good for the Jews?

He probably won't be any worse than the last one, but I'm particularly curious about my own pet Mormon issue, baptizing dead Jews. Every few years someone catches the Mormons on this, and they always issue a mealy-mouthed apology and keep on doing it. I first discovered this several years ago while tracing a friend's family on the LDS genealogy website and found ancestors of his had been included in something called the International Genealogy Index- Mormon code for LDS Baptismal Rolls. Before I could gloat, though, I did some checking on my own family. Karma's a bitch. I had two g.grandparents and a set of g.g.aunts/uncles (apparently they found them via a marriage certificate- my g.grandfather put his brother down as a witness. Damn you, crafty Mormons!)

Particularly galling is just how duplicitous and cynical the Mormons seem to be every time this comes up. They always say it's their "right" to have proxy baptisms in which they "seal" individuals and families to the Mormon Church and then say they can't stop individual members of their Church from submitting names and don't have the resources to check them. Which just seems stupid, because a simple search in the IGI shows that some people have been baptized dozens of times. Check out any remotely famous Founding Father- say George Washington. There are 19 G.W.s with the same birthday. Another 7 have the same marriage date, and 22 have the same death date.

But let's get back to the Jewish stuff. How about the Baal Shem Tov? Presumably even someone who's spent their whole life in Utah and never met a Jew might be able to tell that someone named Israel ben Eliezer might be Jewish.

And yet...












Ok. What about the prestigious Halberstam family?












Whoops.

But so what, some might say. Who cares about Hasidim anyway? Good point. Here's a Litvisher family some of you may have heard of.










Eep.

They've got the Gerrers too. As well as Rashi (3 times), Rabbenu Tam, the Maharshal (5 times), the Maharal (3 times), R. Joshua Falk, and plenty of others. Menachem Begin's family (his father 5 times, his brother 2 times), and so on.

If the Mormons really cared about this, they would re-vamp their entire system and run names through a database to avoid: A- baptizing the same person more than once (or, say, 20) times, or B- baptizing people on a "do not touch" list. Seriously, it's ridiculous how many historical figures they've got here. Lief Ericson, Gandhi, Al Capone, Genghis Khan, Shakespeare, various Kennedys, a good half-dozen Popes, MLK, Thomas Paine, Roger Williams, William Penn, Jean-Paul Sartre, etc. Apparently some members of the Catholic and Armenian Orthodox Churches are starting to get annoyed as well.

The exasperating thing is that the LDS Church's usual response is to either dismiss the problem as "water under the bridge" (to whom?) or simply delete the most famous Jews in their system- you won't find Albert Einstein or Sigmund Freud, for instance, but you'll find their entire extended families several times over. And in the meantime, the Church leadership continues to pretend like they give a damn about Jewish concerns while not bothering to explain the issue to their flock (who are at least honest about the fact that they don't understand or care about our issues), and perpetuating a pretty mixed message about honesty and principles. If the LDS Church isn't going to stop doing this, I'd rather they just told us all to shove it. But don't act like you really care and are going to do something and then keep on doing the same thing. We don't like being lied to anymore than we like our dead being desecrated.

I guess we're just funny that way.

P.S. Check out the Church's take on the whole thing here. Given how oblivious they seem to be about how many other Jews (including Holocaust victims like the Begins) are still in the IGI, I think we can safely guess not too much is going to change anytime soon.