Today, the Senate begins deliberations over the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Drawing on George Washington’s famous letter to Moses Seixas, leader of the synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, Meir Soloveichik explicates the importance of not allowing religion to determine who is or is not fit for public office:
Much attention has been paid to Judge Barrett’s faith, and to “People of Praise,” a religious community of both Catholics and Protestants to which she belongs. Articles have described the oath, or “covenant,” taken by its members to act in loving service to one another. Another topic raised was a speech delivered by Barrett, describing her ultimate aspiration as serving “the kingdom of God.” These stories insinuate that her religion marks her as out of the mainstream, or unable to serve fairly as a Supreme Court justice.
Traditional Jews in America who read these broadsides against Judge Barrett can easily imagine similar ones about themselves. We might wonder what the reaction would now be were a member of our own religious community appointed to a position of prominence. After all, the Jewish liturgy’s expressed aspiration, in an existence filled with injustice, is “to fix the world through the kingship of God.” We believe ourselves bound by a covenant to other Jews, and many of our observances mark us as different, just as they did in Seixas’s day. Like Muslims, Sikhs, and other minority faith communities, we dream of our daughters and sons experiencing American equality without suffering for their beliefs. We continue to celebrate Seixas’s legacy, and work for an America where what Justice Elena Kagan, [speaking of the correspondence at Seixas’s synagogue] said about her grandparents will be true about our grandchildren: that their Jewishness, “strange as it may seem to some, would prove no barrier to their accomplishments.”
A judge’s jurisprudence—as well as the propriety of such a nomination so close to an election—are worthy matters of debate, and they are appropriate reasons to oppose or support Judge Barrett’s nomination. But her faith is not.
Read more on New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/11/opinion/amy-coney-barrett-faith.html