Mormonism and Judaism - Baptism For The Dead

Baptism For The Dead

See also: Baptism for the dead#Jewish Holocaust victims and Criticism of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints#Baptism for the dead

A longtime practice of the LDS Church has been to vicariously baptize their relatives. This stems from the LDS belief that all individuals must receive all saving ordinances (i.e., sacraments) to achieve exaltation. Under Mormon theology, vicarious performance of the ordinance of baptism and other temple ordinances does not automatically make a deceased individual a Mormon, but rather allows the person (believed by Mormons to be alive in the afterlife) the option of freely accepting or rejecting the ordinances performed on their behalf. Mormons do not believe they have the right or power to compel acceptance of vicarious ordinances or change a deceased person's religious affiliation against his will.

From time to time, and contrary to LDS Church policy, zealous Latter-day Saint genealogists have submitted the names of other prominent individuals, including at one point Jewish and other victims of the Holocaust. Official Church policy states that Church members submit the names of their own relatives for these type of ordinances, and requires that permission of the closest living relative be obtained for any baptism that is to be performed for deceased individuals born within the last 95 years. Regardless, some Baptisms were done for Holocaust victims, without proper approval or permission. When this information became public, it generated vocal criticism of the LDS Church from Jewish groups, who found this ritual to be insulting and insensitive as attempting to contact the dead is forbidden under Jewish law, as one of the 613 commandments found the Torah. In 1995, in part as a result of public pressure, Church leaders promised to put new policies into place that would help stop the practice, unless specifically requested or approved by the surviving spouse, children or parents of the victims.

In late 2002, information surfaced that members of the Church had not stopped the practice of baptizing dead Jewish Holocaust victims despite directives from the Church leadership to its members. Criticism once again arose from Jewish groups. Los Angeles' Simon Wiesenthal Center is on record as opposing the vicarious baptism of Holocaust victims. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the center stated, "If these people did not contact the Mormons themselves, the adage should be: Don't call me, I'll call you. With the greatest of respect to them, we do not think they are the exclusive arbitrators of who is saved." Recently Church leaders have agreed to meet with leaders of the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

In December 2002, independent researcher Helen Radkey published a report showing that the Church's 1995 promise to remove Jewish Nazi victims from its International Genealogical Index was not sufficient; her research of the Church's database uncovered the names of about 19,000 who had a 40 to 50 percent chance of having "the potential to be Holocaust victims…in Russia, Poland, France, and Austria."

Genealogist Bernard Kouchel conducted a search of the International Genealogical Index, and discovered that many well-known people from within Judaism have been vicariously baptized, including Rashi, Maimonides, Albert Einstein, Menachem Begin, Irving Berlin, Marc Chagall, and Gilda Radner. Some permissions may have been obtained, but there is currently no system in place to verify that these permissions were obtained, which has angered many in various religious and cultural communities.

In 2004, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Jewish genealogy columnist for The Jerusalem Post, noted that Jews, even those with no Mormon descendants, are being rebaptized after being removed from the rolls. In an interview, D. Todd Christofferson, a church official, told The New York Times that it was not feasible for the church to continuously monitor the archives to ensure that no new Jewish names appear. The agreement referred to above did not place this type of responsibility on the centralized Church leadership.

On April 11, 2005, Jewish and Mormon officials met and created a joint Jewish/Mormon committee with the goal of preventing future issues. The committee met intermittently over the next few years. On September 1, 2010, Jewish and Mormon leaders issued a joint statement "acknowledging that concerns between members of both groups over sensitive doctrinal issue have been eliminated." However, in February 2012, the issue re-emerged after it was found that the parents of Holocaust survivor and Jewish rights advocate Simon Wiesenthal were added to the LDS Church genealogical database.