Is Freedom of Religion Under Attack?

             The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday is the need to protect freedom of religion. According to Dennis Prager, a recent attack on Judaism and Christianity was from The New York Times and took place at the most holy time of the year for each religion. On Good Friday – the eve of the Passover – the “Times published an opinion piece on God, the Bible, and Passover” and “mocked all three.” 

             As usual, the two copies of his column – one in the print edition and one in the digital edition – were written by one person who was upset with his religion. Shalom Auslander is “a Jew who is bitter over his ultra-Orthodox upbringing in Brooklyn.” The main idea of his writing is that it is time to “give up God.” Prager gave the following highlights for Auslander’s words.

Auslander begins his column with a brief explanation of the name “Passover” – God passed over the homes of the Israelites on his way through Egypt, slaying all firstborns. The author follows that introduction with a proposal: “In this time of war and violence, of oppression and suffering, I propose we pay over something else: God.”

He then proceeds to depict the rabbi at his yeshiva as a sadist who reveled in the suffering of the Egyptians, “young and old, innocent and guilty.” This rabbi, he claimed, even told his yeshiva class that during the first plague – which caused the waters of Egypt to turn into blood – “Mothers nursing their babies … found their breast milk had turned to blood.”

Auslander then adds: “‘Yay!’ my classmates cheered.”

Prager proceeded to explained that he had “studied in a yeshiva until the age of 19"

as well as “written three volumes of a five-volume commentary on the Torah (“The Rational Bible”). In addition, he wrote “the best-selling Haggadah in America (according to Amazon), “The Rational Passover Haggadah.” Obviously, he knows “a fair amount about this subject.”

            Prager explained that he “never heard a Jew say that Egyptian mothers’ milk turned into blood.” This was a new idea to me also. The chapters in Exodus tell us that water turned into blood but did not mention mothers’ milk. If Auslander was not lying, he certainly wrote something that is bizarre and not heard previously.

             Auslander wrote that his classmates cheered when the teacher spoke of the deaths of the Egyptians. Prager stated, “this is the very opposite of how Jews have been taught to relate to the sufferings of the ancient Egyptians.” He then gave three examples.

First, according to the Talmud – the holiest Jewish work after the Hebrew Bible, written nearly 2,000 years ago – with regard to the Egyptians drowning in the sea after God split it to enable the Jews to cross it, God admonished his angels who sang a song of rejoicing: “My handiwork is drowning in the sea and you are singing before me?!” Every Jew who attends yeshiva is taught that. Every.

Second, also nearly 2,000 years ago, the Midrash (a collection of stories and commentary that interpret the Hebrew scriptures) explained why Jews are to recite only half of the Hallel (psalms of thanksgiving) during the days of Passover following the Seder: “We cannot sing a full song of thanksgiving for the salvation of our people, which was purchased so dearly with the sinking of the pursuers into the Red Sea.”

Third, for at least 100 years, and some say many more, the reason Jews have given for the symbolic spilling of wine from their cups while reciting the 10 plagues during the Seder is that we are to symbolically diminish our joy when retelling the Egyptians’ suffering.

            Prager shared more information from Auslander: “If ye were mortal, the God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims would be dragged to The Hague. And yet we praise him. We emulate him. We implore our children to be like him… Perhaps now is a good time to teach our children to pass over God – to be as unlike him as possible.” Auslander continued by saying that children should jeer, “Boo!” “when they hear biblical stories about God.”

            In closing, Prager drew two conclusions. The first is that The New York Times would join Auslander in the hope that children would boo God. Since the time of Marx and Lenin, leftists loathe the traditions of traditional Western religions and Judeo-Christian values. Prager separated the liberals that affirm religion from the left who hates it. “The left understands that the only viable opposition to it consists of Orthodox Jews, traditional Catholics, evangelical Protestants, and traditional Mormons.” Prager’s “second conclusion concerns cowardice.”

It is close to inconceivable that The New York Times would publish a column mocking Allah, Muhammad, and the Quran during the month of Ramadan (or, for that matter, at any time of the year).

It is now Ramadan, and the only articles I could find in The New York Times about the Muslim holy month are about food: “15 Recipes for Observing Ramadan” and “Where Breaking the Ramadan Fast Includes Caribou,” an article about Muslims in Anchorage, Alaska.

Why is there no New York Times piece mocking Allah or Islam? There are, after all, plenty of disaffected Muslims like Auslander, the disaffected Jew, who could write one. The answer is The New York Times is deathly afraid of incurring Muslims’ wrath, but it has no fear of incurring the wrath of Jews or Christians. For good reason.

            Prager concluded his article by saying that Auslander’s column tells us more “about The New York Times and the left than it says about Judaism or the Bible.”

I suppose that every religion – besides Islam – have disaffected members who write terrible words about their former religion. There are plenty of former members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who write “anti-Mormon” garbage. Anyone who is sincere in their seeking to learn about any religion should go to the source and not listen to someone who is bitter about their experience.

Anyone seeking information about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should link to this website. It contains current information as well as historical information. Also, you could stop the young men in dark suits, white shirts, and ties or the young women in dresses – both of which wear name tags with the name of the Church.