D
dosdog
Guest
what exactly is your point -OH no, someone call the ADL!
Seriously, Valke, get over it. The Mormons shouldn’t have to change their religious practices to appease the Jews…if we Catholicshad changed our religious practices to appease you, you people would not have crucified Jesus and killed His Apostles. Your Talmud insults Christ and Mary but I don’t the Catholic League going after you and I don’t see you rewriting your Talmud to appease Christians.
I don’t want to give the impression that the Mormon practice of baptizing the dead is doctrinally OK, I’m just sick of Jews using the Holocaust to push everyone around. If the state of Israel is going to make the Mormons change their practice of baptizing the dead so they can have religious freedom their, the state of Utah ought to at least put some restrictions on the practice of Judaism.
A Letter is Sent to the Mormon Church
Given the negative reaction by Mayfield to my protest a year earlier, I decided that a person higher on the ladder had to be contacted and made the decision to write to the elder of the Church who was in charge of the Family History Department, J. Richard Clarke. I called Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern to make him aware of the Gedenkbuch extraction and my plans to write to Elder Clarke. Rabbi Stern was dismayed at the Mormon’s actions and agreed that a letter should be written. Prior to sending the letter, I showed it to Rabbi Stern who approved of its contents. The now-famous letter, which was published in the Spring 1994 issue of AVOTAYNU, nine months after it was sent to Clarke, stated:
Dear Elder Clarke:
It has come to my attention that well-intentioned LDS members are baptizing Jewish victims of the Holocaust into the Mormon faith. It shows incredible insensitivity to the anguish of the living relatives of these martyrs, some of whom saw their loved ones murdered, to perform a Christian ritual on people who were killed for only one reason; they were Jews.
Baptism is a Christian ceremony that is particularly repugnant to Jews. It reminds us of the centuries of persecution against Jews where our ancestors were given a choice; be baptized or suffer death. There are many Christians living today who can trace their family history back to people who chose option one. Our Jewish history books are filled with martyrs who chose option two.
Postscript. Starting in about 2000 activist researchers claimed that the LDS Church was not honoring its commitment to the Jews, for they continued posthumous baptism of Holocaust victims and others.
Investigation by me verified that information. I notified Michel who evaluated the evidence and he
agreed with the conclusion. Since 2004, Michel has had a dialogue with the Church but the matter is
still unresolved as of the summer of 2006.
by Gary Mokotoff
Reprinted from the Summer 1995 issue of AVOTAYNU
Copyright 1995, Avotaynu, Inc.