Jews Should Applaud the Supreme Court’s Decision against Banning Religious Symbols from the Public Square

On June 20, the Supreme Court ruled that a 40-foot cross, erected in 1925 to commemorate those Americans who died fighting in World War I, could be allowed to remain on state property in Bladensburg, Maryland. The case originated with the American Humanist Society, which claimed that the cross’s presence on public land violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause. While some Jewish groups, most notably the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), objected to the decision, Jonathan Tobin argues that Jews should view it favorably:

What remains troubling about this case is not so much the arguments put forward by the plaintiffs, [but] that the effort to take down the war memorial seemed animated by hostility to the intersection of faith and the state that goes far beyond the mandate of the Constitution’s establishment clause. In the early years of the American republic, many states maintained restrictions on the rights of non-Christians, which were incompatible with the Constitution’s promise of freedom. To the extent that the majority needed to be restrained from establishing their faith at the expense of minorities, it was appropriate to build a wall of separation between church and state.

It ill behooves those who lament the fraying of the fabric of our common political culture and a spirit of growing intolerance to support a campaign to eradicate inoffensive memorials; doing so will only reinforce the belief that religion is under siege in the United States. The mere presence of a cross intended to memorialize the fallen involves, as Justice Clarence Thomas rightly noted, “no legal coercion” that should worry Jews or any other non-Christian group.

To the extent that some Jews think eradicating evidence of the faith of others can only protect their safety or even their sensibilities, they are doing neither religious freedom nor the country any good. To the contrary, by demonstrating hostility to, and intolerance for, the faith or the symbols venerated by other Americans, the ADL and other supporters of [the American Humanist Society’s] position are setting us up for unnecessary conflicts that are bad for America, as well as for Jews.

Read more at JNS

More about: ADL, American Jewry, American law, Freedom of Religion, Supreme Court

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society