Theos-Talk Archives (December 2002 Message tt00514)

Larry F Kolts wrote:
> 16-The Jews who have opposed this are not being rational. They don't
> understand that from their perspective this is all a bunch of nonsense
> and that from the Mormon perspective all that is being done is viewed 
> as an opportunity which may be rejected and not a done deal
> 
> 17-The names of all those who have been baptized form the basis of 
> the vast genealogy files which Mormons offer to the world for 
> research. So by rejecting this work, Jewish names will no longer be 
> found in those files, a loss for those Jews who might want to compile 
> their ancestry.

One aspect of Judaism which is not understood by many who belong to
religions with central organizations is that there is no central
organization of Judaism; at most, there are educational institutions
that give out rabbinical degrees which have organizations, but, with the
exception of the Hassidic cults, only the rabbis need worry about these.
Any individual Jew can belong to any (and as many) congregation(s) that
he or she chooses, so long as they respect the members of those
congregations (and, for the most part, even if they don't). 

In other words, there is no single Jew or even group of Jews who can
speak for all, or even most Jews (as has been pointed out here, there
are even groups of Jews who believe that Israel is an illegitimate
state). 

Bart Lidofsky