Names submitted for temple ordinances

[pam]

Names Submitted for Temple Ordinances - Church News and Events

The following letter from the First Presidency was mailed to priesthood leaders Feb. 29, 2012, with directions that it is to be read to members during sacrament meeting.

[pam]

This is not really to start a new discussion or debate. This is just to point out news that a letter has been sent out to read in Sacrament meetings.

[Jezebel2011]

My friends and I had a discussion about this just the other day.

We are concerned that we might - inadvertently - have submitted, or submit people from our own family tree that were Jewish, that we didn't know were Jewish.

.

[skippy740]

I have plenty of ancestry that were Jewish and in the holocaust. But we are directly related... so no problem.

If we all stick to our own family history roots, there is no problem. If we wanted to be more "zealous" about saving the entire human race that has ever lived... well, that's when problems seem to arise.

[HEthePrimate]

Names Submitted for Temple Ordinances - Church News and Events

The following letter from the First Presidency was mailed to priesthood leaders Feb. 29, 2012, with directions that it is to be read to members during sacrament meeting.

Oh good, now that I've read the letter, I don't have to attend sacrament meeting tomorrow!

(Just kidding! )

[HEthePrimate]

The letter says:

Without exception, Church members must not submit for proxy temple ordinances any names from unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and Jewish Holocaust victims. (Emphasis added)

The way I read that, even if I'm related to a Holocaust victim, I can't do his work.

I do have Jewish ancestors, but they were not Holocaust victims, and are from hundreds of years ago, so there should be no problem with doing their work (actually, it's already done).

I'm curious as to what other "unauthorized groups" there might be.

[Jezebel2011]

I am especially concerned about one of my late Father's aunts who married a Dutch man way back after his family had fled the Netherlands to escape the Nazis.

Since both he, his wife and their children are all now deceased I would guess that I am considered family. Their work has been done at the Temple.

I am not sure whether this man was Jewish or not and there is no-one left in the family who would know.

.

[Vort]

The letter says:

The way I read that, even if I'm related to a Holocaust victim, I can't do his work.

I do have Jewish ancestors, but they were not Holocaust victims, and are from hundreds of years ago, so there should be no problem with doing their work (actually, it's already done).

I'm curious as to what other "unauthorized groups" there might be.

I'm sure you are reading it wrong. The quote:

• Our preeminent obligation is to seek out and identify our own ancestors. Those whose names are submitted for proxy temple ordinances should be related to the submitter.
• Without exception, Church members must not submit for proxy temple ordinances any names from unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and Jewish Holocaust victims. If members do so, they may forfeit their New FamilySearch privileges. Other corrective action may also be taken.

The first bullet point identifies one of the "authorized groups" -- namely, ancestors and close relatives. The second bullet point then clarifies that if you are not working with such an authorized group (like relatives), you should not do proxy work for those people, and specifically for Jewish Holocaust victims.

[pam]

Actually I think HET has a good point. It could be taken both ways. I think if they do not want anyone to do temple work for Jewish Holocaust victims it should state (whether they be ancestors or not). Or when they say Jewish Holocaust victims perhaps it should state "Unless directly related to them."

But my understanding has always been that we are not to do work for Jewish Holocaust victims at all. Whether related or not. Especially now that it says we should not do work for unauthorized groups such as......

[HEthePrimate]

Confession time: Many moons ago, I did some temple work for Jewish Holocaust victims to whom I am not related. A friend was handing them out, and we were all excited to be doing something good for those people who had suffered so much. In my defense, I was young and foolish, and this was back in the days before it became publicly known that Mormons were doing this, and before Jewish people complained about this practice. If a friend was handing out the names of Jewish Holocaust victims today, I would "just say 'no'."

[carlimac]

Why would we not be able to do temple work for Holocaust victims if they were most definitely our ancestors?

[annewandering]

Why would we not be able to do temple work for Holocaust victims if they were most definitely our ancestors?

Right now I would hesitate just to avoid having more problems created for the church. Listening to the spirit would be a good plan.

Edited March 5, 2012 by annewandering

[carlimac]

I don't have any Holocaust ancestors that I know of so it's not my problem. I wouldn't be at all surprised if many names have been submitted innocently without the person even realizing they were in the Holocaust.

So is someone on both sides (LDS and Jewish) constantly monitoring the list of names? I appreciate the First Presidency's letter and their concern but it leaves lots of questions unanswered. I guess there are answers by calling a family history center and talking to a pro.

[annewandering]

There is someone monitoring all right. Its a nutsy lady in Utah who has made it her life's purpose to try to embarrass the church if at all possible.

[carlimac]

I read that in the Deseret News. (rolling eyes) But I'm wondering if anyone is employed by the Church or has a calling to monitor it. Here's another question. Do the Jews have all the data on the Holocaust people, like exact birth dates and parentage? It could well be that there are many people who have the same exact names as those who were in the concentration camps but who weren't actually ever there and didn't die there. And is the list limited to only Holocaust victims or does it pertain to any Jew born in Europe during that time period? And what about the ones who were in the camps but escaped or were freed? I wonder how anyone can really be sure that a name on the Jews' list was actually in the Holocaust unless the Jews are doing as much genealogy research as LDS are. Just pondering all the implications...

[skippy740]

Mormon ritual is no threat to Jews - Boston.com

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

Mormon ritual is no threat to Jews

EDITORIAL | Opinion | Jeff Jacoby

February 29, 2012|By Jeff Jacoby

IN A COLUMN many years ago, I described how I once attempted to chart a family tree. Most of my father’s family had been killed in Auschwitz, and my efforts to trace their genealogy left me, I wrote, with a family tree that “has stumps where branches ought to be’’ and “gets narrower, not wider, as it grows.’’

A woman phoned me the morning that column appeared. She said she was a Mormon, and wanted to add the names of my father’s massacred relatives — the column had mentioned about 18 of them by name — to the Mormon Church’s vast genealogical archives. I told her that I certainly had no objection. Indeed, I was grateful for any gesture that might help preserve some remembrance of these family members whose lives had been so cruelly cut short.

At the time I knew nothing about “baptism by proxy,’’ the ritual that Mormons believe gives even souls in the afterlife a chance to accept their faith and thus enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Only later did I learn that some Mormons, eager to save the souls of dead Jews, had taken to submitting the names of Holocaust victims for posthumous baptism.

The discovery didn’t trouble me at all. In Judaism, conversion after death is a concept without meaning; no after-the-fact rites in this world can possibly change the Jewishness of the men, women, children, and babies whom the Nazis, in their obsessive hatred, singled out for extermination. I found the Mormons’ belief eccentric, not offensive. By my lights, their efforts to make salvation available to millions of deceased strangers were ineffectual. But plainly they were sincere, and intended as a kindness.

Other Jews, however, were offended. There was a commotion over the issue in the 1990s, and in response the Mormon Church formally barred proxy baptism for Jewish Holocaust victims. As a rule the ban is respected, but there are occasional violations of church policy, and the issue is back in the news following reports that Anne Frank, who died at 15 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, was recently baptized by proxy at a Mormon temple in the Dominican Republic. Relatives of Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and the parents of the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal were also submitted for proxy baptisms.

So now there’s a whole new commotion, with some prominent Jewish voices once again loudly expressing indignation.

“Holocaust victims were killed solely because they were Jews,’’ fumes Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “And here comes the Mormon Church taking away their Jewishness. It’s like killing them twice.’’ The Simon Wiesenthal Center, pronouncing itself “outraged,’’ declares that the latest proxy baptisms “make a mockery’’ of Jewish-Mormon relations. Wiesel himself insists that Mitt Romney, as “the most famous and important Mormon in the country,’’ has a moral obligation to tell his church: “Stop it.’’

But if anyone should be told to “stop it,’’ it’s men like Foxman and Wiesel, whose reactions to this issue have been unworthy and unfair.

For one thing, the Mormon Church promptly apologized for the listing of Anne Frank and the others, and firmly reiterated its policy: “Proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims are strictly prohibited.’’ Leaping to take offense at something the church has unequivocally repudiated is cheap grandstanding.

More odious by far is the accusation that a posthumous “baptism’’ to which no Jew attaches any credence is tantamount to a second genocide (“It’s like killing them twice’’). What an ugly slander. Even to the most zealous Mormon, proxy baptism is simply the offering of a choice — it gives non-Mormons in the afterlife a chance to accept the gospel, should they wish to. You don’t have to buy the theology — I certainly don’t — to recognize that its message is benign.

As a Jew, I am less interested in what other religions teach about the fate of Jews in the next world than in how they affect the fate of Jews in this world. Rafael Medoff, a scholar of America’s response to the Holocaust, notes that Mormon leaders were outspoken supporters of efforts to rescue Jews from Nazi Europe at a time when many mainstream Christians were silent. For example, Utah Senator William King — among the most renowned Mormons of his day — strongly backed legislation that could have saved Anne Frank and her family.

Outraged by proxy baptisms? Count me out. As my stunted family tree attests, the Jewish people have very real, very dangerous enemies. Mormons undergoing peaceful rituals in their own temples aren’t on the list.

[RescueMom]

I think the First Presidency is a better choice to follow than an editorial in the Boston Globe. I know what my choice will be and it won't be a Boston Paper.

[Maureen]

I think the First Presidency is a better choice to follow than an editorial in the Boston Globe. I know what my choice will be and it won't be a Boston Paper.

Did you bother to read the Boston Globe article?

M.

[carlimac]

Did you bother to read the Boston Globe article?

M.

It was a great article.

[skippy740]

The article doesn't say "don't follow the First Presidency". The article (essentially) says that the Jews should "get over it" and focus on bigger and more important things affecting them.

[Blackmarch]

There is someone monitoring all right. Its a nutsy lady in Utah who has made it her life's purpose to try to embarrass the church if at all possible.

Just one?

[pam]

Since this is getting away from just being an announcement which I stated at the beginning of the thread....it is now closed.