ARTICLE - ITS UNJUST TO SAY LDS (Mormon) CHURCH IS ANTI-SEMITIC

It's unjust to say LDS Church is anti-Semitic

By Dan Peterson

For the Deseret News

Published: Thursday, March 15 2012

One of the charges leveled in the recent controversy over vicarious baptisms for the dead is that Mormonism is anti-Semitic.

Nothing could be further from the truth.
Latter-day Saints are, for example, the only religious group of which I'm aware whose canonical scripture expressly denounces anti-Jewish bigotry.
The familiar prophecy in 2 Nephi 29:3, that "many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible," is typically used to argue for extrabiblical scripture. And, plainly, that's one of Nephi's points. Still, we shouldn't overlook the next three verses:
"But thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? Do they remember the travails, and the labors, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in bringing forth salvation unto the Gentiles?
"O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. But behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people.
"Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews?"
By contrast, while neither can be legitimately used to charter anti-Semitism, both the New Testament and Quran are replete with denunciations of the Jews for having persecuted and slain their own ancient prophets, and the gospel of John, in particular, blames "the Jews" for the killing of Jesus. The famous "passion play" at Oberammergau, in Germany, historically based on John's account of the last days of Christ, has sometimes come under fire in recent decades for alleged anti-Semitism.
Far from being anti-Semitic, the Book of Mormon is actually philo-Semitic, pro-Jewish. And Mormon support for the Jews is further demonstrated in a famous episode from early Latter-day Saint history.
By the 19th century, hope of a return to Palestine was fading among many Jews. An 1845 conference of rabbis in Frankfurt-am-Main deleted all prayers for a return to Zion and the restoration of a Jewish state from their ritual prayer books. An 1869 rabbinic conference in Philadelphia essentially agreed.

In April 1840, though, the Prophet Joseph Smith dispatched Orson Hyde and John Page of the Council of the Twelve Apostles "to visit the cities of London, Amsterdam, Constantinople and Jerusalem." They were to carry a letter of introduction with them into the domains of the Ottoman Empire, explaining that "The Jewish nations have been scattered abroad among the Gentiles for a long period; and in our estimation, the time of the commencement of their return to the Holy Land has already arrived."
Only Elder Hyde completed the arduous mission, spending April 1841 to December 1842 in Jerusalem. Before dawn on Oct. 24, 1841, he climbed the Mount of Olives, where, overlooking the city, he wrote and recited a prayer. Here's a paragraph from it:
"Now, O Lord! Thy servant has been obedient to the heavenly vision which Thou gavest him in his native land; and under the shadow of Thine outstretched arm, he has safely arrived in this place to dedicate and consecrate this land unto Thee, for the gathering together of Judah's scattered remnants, according to the predictions of the holy Prophets — for the building up of Jerusalem again after it has been trodden down by the Gentiles so long, and for rearing a Temple in honor of Thy name."
Then, having built a small altar of stones, he descended from the mount.
The "First Aliyah" or Jewish emigration to Palestine can be dated to 1882, and many consider 1897, the year in which the First Zionist Congress met in Basel, Switzerland, to create the World Zionist Organization, as the birth year of practical Zionism.
Mormonism isn't committed to any particular position on the Arab-Israeli conflict, but, plainly, while many Jews were abandoning the idea, a Mormon apostle was praying for their return to Jerusalem. And, while many Christians have used the Bible to justify prejudice against Jews, the Book of Mormon expressly condemns such prejudice.
It's simply unjust to claim that Mormonism is anti-Semitic.

NEWS - MOSCOW MUSEUM PUTS LENINS JEWISH ROOTS ON DISPLAY

Monday, May. 23, 2011
Moscow museum puts Lenin's Jewish roots on display
By MANSUR MIROVALEV

MOSCOW — For the first time ever, ordinary Russians can now see documents that appear to confirm long-standing rumors that Vladimir Lenin had Jewish heritage.

In a country long plagued by anti-Semitism, such heritage can be a significant taint, especially for the founder of the Soviet Union who is still revered by many elderly Russians.

Among dozens of newly released documents on display at the State History Museum is a letter written by Lenin's eldest sister, Anna Ulyanova, saying that their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew who converted to Christianity to escape the Pale of Settlement and gain access to higher education.

"He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of (the western Ukrainian city of) Zhitomir," Ulyanova wrote in a 1932 letter to Josef Stalin, who succeeded Lenin after his death in 1924.

"Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly," she wrote. "I am very sorry that the fact of our origin - which I had suspected before - was not known during his lifetime."

Under czarist rule, most Jews were allowed permanent residence only in a restricted area that became known as the Pale of Settlement which included much of present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and parts of western Russia.

Many Jews joined the Bolsheviks to fight rampant anti-Semitism in czarist Russia and some were among the leaders of the Communist Party when it took power after the 1917 Revolution. Most prominent among them was Leon Trotsky, whose real name was Bronstein.

But Lenin, who was born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, identified himself only as Russian. He took Lenin as his nom de guerre in 1901 while in Siberian exile near the Lena River.

A brief period of promotion of Jewish culture that began under Lenin ended in the early 1930s when Stalin orchestrated anti-Semitic purges among Communists and hatched a plan to relocate all Soviet Jews to a region on the Chinese border.

Ulyanova asked Stalin to make Lenin's Jewish heritage known to counter the rise of anti-Semitism. "I hear that in recent years anti-Semitism has been growing stronger again, even among Communists," she wrote. "It would be wrong to hide the fact from the masses."

Stalin ignored the plea and ordered her to "keep absolute silence" about her letter, according to the exhibition's curator, Tatyana Koloskova.

Lenin's official biography, written by his niece Olga Ulyanova, said his family had only Russian, German and Swedish roots.

The letter from Lenin's sister became available to Russian historians in the early 1990s, but its authenticity was fiercely disputed. It was chosen for inclusion in the exhibit by Koloskova, who as director of the State History Museum's branch dedicated to Lenin is one of the most authoritative scholars on his life.

The exhibition in the museum on Red Square, near the mausoleum where Lenin's body still lies, also discloses that he was in such misery after suffering a stroke in 1922 that he asked Stalin to bring him poison.

"He did not incidentally pick Stalin to fulfill this request," Lenin's youngest sister, Maria Ulyanova, wrote in a 1922 diary entry. "He knew Comrade Stalin as a steadfast Bolshevik, straight and devoid of any sentimentality. Who else would dare to end Lenin's life?"

Initially, Stalin promised to help Lenin, but other Politburo members decided to turn down his request, the letter says. Trotsky, whom Stalin forced out of the Soviet Union, claimed in his memoirs that Stalin had poisoned Lenin.

The 111 documents on display, many of them only recently declassified and all of them open to the public for the first time, give surprising insights into top figures of the Soviet Union. Men usually portrayed as stern and fearless are seen as sometimes whimsical, frightened and even despairing.

One of the documents contains a desperate plea that Stalin received in 1934 from an arrested Communist leader, Lev Kamenev, whose real name was Rosenfeld.

"At a time when my soul is filled with nothing but love for the party and its leadership, when, having lived through hesitations and doubts, I can boldly say that I learned to highly trust the Central Committee's every step and every decision you, Comrade Stalin, make," Kamenev wrote. "I have been arrested for my ties to people that are strange and disgusting to me."

Stalin ignored this letter, too, and Kamenev was executed in 1936.

A slightly more humorous - but no less macabre - aspect of the exhibition is caricatures drawn by Politburo members.

Nikolai Bukharin, a leading Communist ideologue, depicts Stalin with a giant, exaggerated nose and his trademark pipe. His portrayal of other Communists is also unflattering - one is shown as a White Army officer. The anti-Communist White Army, which was backed by Western powers, unsuccessfully fought Lenin's Red Army in a civil war from 1917-23.

Prominent economist Valery Mezhlauk ridicules Trotsky as a Wandering Jew and depicts a finance minister hanging in an awkward position. In a handwritten note under the latter caricature, Stalin recommends that the minister be hanged by his testicles.

The minister and both cartoonists were arrested and executed in 1938.

The exhibition, which opened last week, runs through July 3.