Some of our Christian acquaintances are surprised that my wife, Maureen, chose to be one of 20 plaintiffs — comprising Catholics, Protestants, atheists, another Jew and others — to sue the city of La Crosse in 2002 about the display of the Ten Commandments in Cameron Park, a downtown public park here. Why should a Jewish person be offended?
The movement to place Ten Commandments statues in public places across this country is actually part of a larger effort to aggressively insert Christianity into the public space.
As Moral Majority founder and Christian conservative activist Rev. Jerry Falwell stated (on the WorldNetDaily Web site on Feb. 26): “The problem is secularists are attempting to rewrite our nation’s history, concealing and ignoring the facts of our founding. As a result, Christian symbols such as the Ten Commandments are to be exterminated in the public square.”
The Ten Commandments for most Christians are part of the Christian culture, and the overlap with Judaism is as coincidental as the overlap of Jesus’ Last Supper with the Jewish celebration of Passover.
At first glance, it would seem reasonable that Jewish people would support display and teaching of the Ten Commandments in public space.
Wasn’t it Moses who went twice to Mt. Sinai and who finally brought those stone tablets down to the Israelites? Shouldn’t we therefore be willing and supportive of having our cities and schools display the Decalogue?
Unfortunately life isn’t that simple. First of all, there are multiple versions of the Ten Commandments. The common one, given to almost 5000 communities around the country in conjunction with the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille movie, is the Protestant version.
These versions differ, often significantly. For instance, the Catholic version groups the commandment prohibiting the creation of graven images with the “you shall have no other gods” commandment, and therefore doesn’t list it separately.
Thus, it would be impossible for government to settle on one version without somehow endorsing the associated religion as the preferred viewpoint. I am sure that the Jewish version would not be high on the list.
Not secular instructions
Some Orthodox Jews have argued in favor of such displays. In a friend of the court brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court about recent cases concerning such displays, on which the court heard oral arguments last week, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations argued that the endorsement of a specific version of the Ten Commandments is not an endorsement of a particular religion.
Why? Because “The minutiae of the particular text is irrelevant: the [secondary] secular theme of the display is the message that the Ten Commandments have been a historical foundation for a society based on the rule of law,” the brief states.
Since when have Orthodox Jews dismissed minutiae of the text of the Torah? Since when have they called details irrelevant?
To ignore the point that a Christian version is being selected misses the entire reason the Ten Commandments are being endorsed. Not to endorse Judaism, but to support Christianity in the public square.
Others may argue that the Ten Commandments, over the years, have become a secular symbol much like the menorah from Chanukah. The difference is that the menorah is a thing that easily becomes a symbol of the Chanukah holiday.
However, no matter how one spins the Ten Commandments, it remains a list of religious commandments, many of which are far from secular instructions.
They command people to acknowledge that there is only “one God,” to not take the name of the Lord in vain, to not make graven images and to keep the Sabbath. These are religious instructions, no matter how long they have been around and how “secular” they have become over the years.
In a larger sense, it is the separation of church and state that protects members of the Jewish faith from the imposition of religious Christian practices into our lives. While we may be comfortable with a statue of the Ten Commandments or two, will we be equally comfortable with statues of Jesus in our parks and school grounds and advocacy of Christian practices in our public schools?
Once we open these floodgates of religious intolerance, it will be hard to hold back those who wish to make hostile comments about Jews and other minority religious views.
Finally, as members of a minority faith in America, we are especially sensitive to the religious freedom that all of us enjoy in America and we as a group would hate to see this diminished in any sense.
While we may spend most of our energy concerned with our own religious freedom issues, most of us are aware that it is the preservation of religious freedom and the freedom of conscience for all that is crucial for preserving our own individual freedoms.
If we do not fight for the religious freedom of all our citizens, how can we expect other Americans to fight for us?
We must resist being seduced by the siren of seeing our own symbols at the head of the crusade of Christian zealots assaulting our religious freedom.
Robert Freedland, M.D., lives in La Crosse.
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