I’m Jewish and a Reform Jew, not as devout as someone who is a Conservative Jew or an Orthodox Jew. But when I read this story, it heats up my blood like a bubbling pot of chicken soup:
Members of the Mormon Church last year posthumously baptized Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was captured and killed by terrorists in Pakistan shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to records uncovered by a researcher in Utah.
Helen Radkey, an excommunicated Mormon who combs through the church’s archives, said that records indicate Pearl, who was Jewish, was baptized by proxy on June 1, 2011, at a Mormon temple in Twin Falls, Idaho.
Mormons baptize deceased Jews and members of other religions as part of a rite intended to give them access to salvation.
But the practice has stirred outrage among some Jewish leaders. In 1995, the church, after meeting with Jewish leaders, agreed to stop baptizing Holocaust victims. Current church policy encourages members to baptize their ancestors, but does not explicitly forbid the baptism of deceased Jews and people of other faiths.
A former reporter at the Berkshire Eagle, Pearl was 38 when he was abducted while reporting in Karachi, four months after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Pearl’s parents, Judea and Ruth, said it was “disturbing news’’ to learn that Mormons had baptized their son, in a rite that they understand was meant to offer him salvation.
“To them we say: We appreciate your good intentions but rest assured that Danny’s soul was redeemed through the life that he lived and the values that he upheld,’’ Judea and Ruth Pearl said in an e-mail. “He lived as a proud Jew, died as a proud Jew, and is currently facing his creator as a Jew, blessed, accepted and redeemed. For the record, let it be clear: Danny did not choose to be baptized, nor did his family consent to this un-called-for ritual.’’
I think that about says it all.
Pearl had a horrific, tragic death. Couldn’t he — and his family who loved him, worshiped in their religion with him and grieved for him — be left in peace?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.