Monday, August 13, 2007

Seperation of Church and State and the need to uphold this concept

Orthodox Jews must come to a realization. As Jews we have always been persecuted, and the majority of persecutions were under Christian run countries. Christian anti-semitism led to a lot of bigotry and intolerance. Now, the ‘Christian right-wing’ wishes to turn America away from its law separating church from state. Here is a reason why Orthodox Jews should oppose such a move:

The Talmud (Nedarim 28a) says “'Dina de malchuta dina”, which basically means ‘the law of the land is the law’, which should be followed as long as the law is not discriminatory towards Jews in its nature. Seeing that Orthodox Jews are required to uphold the law of the land, the law states (United States Constitution, Amendment I):
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…
Therefore, the law states that the government should not respect religions, nor should it discriminate our rights to practice religion freely.

In the medieval times under Christian theocracies and kings, Jews were heavily persecuted for practicing religion. The secular view of religion allows Jews to freely practice our faith and profess our beliefs openly. Why tamper with such a system, and why consider going against this basic law of the land we live in, when the Talmud says it is the law for us to uphold it? What if theoretically the entire country converted to Hinduism and the barriers between church and state were broken? Then would you be comfortable with idols and Hindu gods and goddesses everywhere, all around you? It is obvious. Orthodox Jews must defend the first amendment; the right to practice religion freely, and the need to keep it out of the government.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for writing this.