A Jewish synagogue is making one of the most disgusting rationales for abortion. it says that killing babies in aboritons is a form of religious freedom and has file a lawsuit against Florida’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks as a result.
There is no religious that serious thinks killing babies is a fundamental component of the religion, outside of potentially pagan cults that sacrificed babies to false gods thousands of years ago. But that’s the argument Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor of Boynton Beach is making in defending its lawsuit against the late-term abortion ban pro-life Governor Ron DeSantis signed.
Never mind that religious freedom in America is about ensuring that people of faith are able to worship freely, never mind that the Constitution affords protection for the right to life and never mind that abortion is the ultimate denial of all freedoms to a baby whose life is ended.
It also falsely claims abortion “is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman” and for other reasons. “As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and this violates their privacy rights and religious freedom,” says the lawsuit.
The lawsuit adds that people who “do not share the religious views reflected in the act will suffer” and that it “threatens the Jewish people by imposing the laws of other religions upon Jews.”
In Florida, Rabbi Barry Silver of Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor — the name means “Generation to Generation”— said it practices “cosmic Judaism,” which he defines on the synagogue’s website as “the Judaism of tomorrow today” that respects science, tradition and spirituality.
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Silver is an attorney, social activist and former Democratic state legislator who styles himself as a “Rabbi-rouser” on his own website. In an interview Tuesday, Silver said when separation of religion and government crumbles, religious minorities such as Jews often suffer.
“Every time that wall starts to crack, bad things start to happen,” he said, noting that DeSantis signed the law at an evangelical Christian church.
But Silver is wrong and misrepresenting his own Jewish faith.
Rabbi Yaakov Menken, who is the managing director of the Coalition for Jewish Values, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that represents over 2,000 rabbis in issues of American public policy, says Jewish teachings on abortion are very clear.
Jewish values are not determined by an alphabet soup of Jewish organizations, but by an immutable and transcendent code of Jewish spirituality, ethics and law. And that Jewish code is clear that life and the soul precede birth. In Genesis, for example, Rebecca is told that her unborn twins have distinct natures (25:23). In the Prophets, G-d informs Jeremiah, “Before I placed you in the womb I knew you, before you left the uterus I sanctified you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (1:5).
Moreover, Jewish tradition insists upon adherence to the Oral Law, in which the Mishnah provides moral instruction that a mother must be saved even at the expense of her child, if necessary, “because her life precedes his life” (Ohalos 7:6). Read that again, because the NCJW, the lead sponsor of the rally, refers to this Mishnah without quoting its explicit reference to the “life” of the fetus. Inexplicably, in the same paragraph, NCJW claims that, under Jewish law, a fetus is “not yet having [a] life of its own.”
In fact, the sanctity of life and the importance of traditional morality both come directly from the Hebrew Bible. Thus, all Americans, especially of the Abrahamic religions, should reject the progressives’ position, predicated as it is upon the absurd notion that it is somehow unconstitutional for the moral values of the citizenry to be reflected in the laws that govern our society.
