Human stupidity sent me an interesting story (he sends me a lot of stuff) about how the Mormons have apologized for posthumously baptizing Jewish Holocaust survivors:
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Mormon church leaders apologized to the family of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal after his parents were posthumously baptized, a controversial ritual that Mormons believe allows deceased people a way to the afterlife but offends members of many other religions.
Wiesenthal died in 2005 after surviving the Nazi death camps and spending his life documenting Holocaust crimes and hunting down perpetrators who remained at large. Jews are particularly offended by an attempt to alter the religion of Holocaust victims, who were murdered because of their religion, and the baptism of Holocaust survivors was supposed to have been barred by a 1995 agreement.
Yet records indicate Wiesenthal’s parents, Asher and Rosa Rapp Wiesenthal, were baptized in proxy ceremonies performed by Mormon church members at temples in Arizona and Utah in late January.
In a statement, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the baptismal rites.
“We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the center.
The church immediately apologized, saying it was the actions of an individual member of church — whom they did not name — that led to the submission of Wiesenthal’s name.
“We sincerely regret that the actions of an individual member of the church led to the inappropriate submission of these names,” Michael Purdy, a spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said in a statement issued Monday. “We consider this a serious breach of our protocol and we have suspended indefinitely this person’s ability to access our genealogy records.”
“Outraged”, “insensitive” and “apologized” seem to be all-to-common words these days. Why stop at being “outraged”? Why not use boiling oil, testicle-crushers and toe- screws on those evil Mormons? How dare they desecrate the names of Holocaust victims by using them in their private ceremonies! Apologies? How about posthumous circumcisions (by a bearded rabbi) on all deceased Mormons. Take ’em out of their graves and posthumously circumcise them, even the ones who are still alive! That’ll show ’em!!
Or better yet: Yawn and bake some hamentashen. Hamentashen, according to Jewish folklore, commemorate the failure of Haman (in the Book of Esther) to kill all the Jews. Now that was something to be worried about. Yes, I would worry about somebody wanting to kill all the Jews (even a few of us). I would not worry about somebody “posthumously baptizing” some Holocaust survivors. Somehow, I doubt the actual “victims” would have been all too worried about it either.
As a token of goodwill, I’ll allow the Mormons to posthumously baptize me too – for a fee of course.
Jewamongyou's Blog 
The late atheist activist Christopher Hitchens (not a fan of the LDS church) addressed this very issue in the closing of one his chapters of God is Not Great:
“It must be said for the “Latter-day Saints” that they have squarely faced one of the great difficulties of revealed religion. This is the problem of what to do about those who were born before the exclusive “revelation,” or who died without ever having the opportunity to share in its wonders.
Every week, at special ceremonies in Mormon temples, the congregations meet and are given a certain quota of names of the departed to “pray in” to their church. This retrospective baptism of the dead seems harmless enough to me, but the American Jewish Committee became incensed when it was discovered that the Mormons had acquired the records of the Nazi “final solution,” and were industriously baptizing what for once could truly be called a “lost tribe”: the murdered Jews of Europe.
For all its touching inefficacy, this exercise seemed in poor taste. I sympathize with the American Jewish Committee, but I nonetheless think that the followers of Mr. Smith should be congratulated for hitting upon even the most simpleminded technological solution to a problem that has defied solution ever since man first invented religion.”
Yes, it’s in poor taste – but nothing to lose sleep over.
Jewish organizations are so desperate because their whole existence relies on pessimism and an unsure future for Jews, which is why there is so much emphasize on the negatives; the threat of anihilation in the middle east, antisemitism in the west, assimilation and intermarriage, the never ending reminders of the holocaust. I will say these organizations are more self serving because Antisemitism is an overplayed card and its continued use is long overdue, and eventually will result in a backlash. I don’t think these organizations have the interests of future generations of Jews in mind. I got banned from Commentary Magazine for telling them that.
Yes, it’s pretty pathetic when those organization feel it’s their job to protect even the names of dead Jews from “anti-semitism” such as this. Good for you for speaking your mind at Commentary Magazine.
No it wasn’t about about the Baptisms, Commentary tends to be more tolerant of the religious right so as not alienate them. I was just addressing the behavior of Jewish organizations in general. I can’t believe that the Jewish establishment is really so clueless, just that they’ve dug a hole so deep they don’t care to come back out. They’re inflicting an unfair burden on my generation of Jews and to Americans in general and leaving us with a mess that we will have to clean up. Dersh, Foxman, Podhoertz, Wolfowitz, Perle etc are old and can conk out any time to avoid the backlash, but we will inevitably have toi deal with the consequences of their actions. If they cared so much, they would just shut up. Instead they go after anyone who confronts them with the mildest criticism and invent cases of “antisemitism” (the baptisms which were a gesture of goodwill.) I want them to feel very guilty before they die.
You don’t know half the weird shit Mormons do.
I know a Mormon guy who eats his own boogers, but I think that’s just for extra credit.
That one made me laugh
Check this out: http://www.lds4u.com/Missionaries/rules.htm
Mormons will go on a mission to Maui and never see a beach.
They also split up the missionaries every six months to prevent homosexuality.
Pretty brutal, and yes, it smacks of a cult.
I looked over those rules. Full court basketball is verboten, but half court is okay. So they’re telling me what God dislikes in 94 feet he’s fine with in 47 feet?
Otherwise, I can grok why there are exceedingly few black Mormons. But I can’t figure out why blacks were ever upset that the LDS Church didn’t allow blacks, as if any would want to be after reading these rules.
Thankfully, they believe that all black people are evil: http://youtu.be/HPGE6CzZ_84
The morons… I mean… um… um… Mormons believe that Amerindians are descendants of a lost tribe from Israel. Of course, a BYU genealogist disproved this, and he was subsequently fired (they censored that tidbit, I will link to an article if I can find one).
http://newsnet.byu.edu/story.cfm/41852/
Jew Among You
This is off topic but I thought I’d ask anyway. Did you read Jewish supremacy? David Duke claims Judaism is an oppressive and misogynistic religion and cited several quotes in the Talmud about menstruation and several gender segregaation laws. I do believe the quotes about gentiles are worth looking into but I’m not so concerned about females. I grew up Orthodox, but I never felt offended by these laws; there are many verses which imply that women are spiritually superior than men and gender segregation during prayer isn’t altogether a bad thing. I do think his assessment is extremely superificial and driven by ulterior motives. He does not have the faintest idea about women and Judaism.
I haven’t read it and I do agree with you that Judaism is certainly not misogynistic. Jews don’t murder their wives for having girls, don’t murder their daughters for dating the wrong guy or encourage treating women with disrespect. A woman is considered sacred, as you say.
As for the things said about gentiles, I’ve already written about it here:
When WN’s use the plight of the Palestinians, or Sephardic Jews, and now the issue of woman’s rights within Orthodoxy as sticks to hit Jews with, they don’t realize they are repeating the talking points of the radical left.
Good point!
“As a token of goodwill, I’ll allow the Mormons to posthumously baptize me too – for a fee of course.”
Continuing with that line of thinking:
I see no reason to vote demo-rat while I live. After all, I’ll probably be doing it once I’m dead.