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Deborah's Rant February 28, 2002
     
I tried to vote on the court's decision on your website, but there's a glitch in the buttons. No matter what, the don't know button stays active, and you can press all three and they stay active. Needs to be fixed, but then I thought -- wait. There's something a little chilling about this. And then I remembered. It reminded me of the meeting at Wannsee, 1942, and SS General Heydrich's discussion of "the Jewish question." How they sat around the table determining who was a first degree Jew, second degree Jew, third degree, and so on. This determined whether they lived, or were "sterilized," which quickly became clear was a euphemism for "exterminated." It's scary to me when courts encroach upon religious territory. It's acceptable, even necessary, for a religious group to define its own membership. All the way from the Unitarians, who accept everyone, to the fundamental Christians, who say if you don't accept every work of scripture as absolute truth and have not been "born again," you are not even a Christian. Establishing a state that is specifically based on religion seems like a slippery slope to me. Clearly, the founding population of Israel was a religiously defined group whose persecution required a new homeland. For their government to be sensitive to the Jewish mentality, and even to observe Jewish holidays made sense. But to decide who is a Jew and who is not? Next, the courts will be putting the Reform Jews in little camps, right next to the Palestinians. Jewish law says your mother must be Jewish for you to be a Jew. So if each stream additionally wants to decide internally who they accept as their own -- fine. But this should not be a legal or governmental issue. The Orthodox Jews in Israel remind me of the Taliban. Follow our ultra- Conservative, fundamentalist views or leave. Narrower and narrower definitions. Black and white. Pushing away instead of welcoming. Scary scary scary.
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