One anecdote described by Avi Greenberg in his novel "The Lost Book of Mormon" (see my earlier post) is that when the LDS Church was in negotiations to open the BYU Center in Jerusalem, part of of the terms they had to agree to were to stop missionary efforts in Israel and to Israelis abroad and to stop working on the official Hebrew translation of the BOM.

Does anyone know if this is true and if so, if the LDS Church has kept to the terms of the deal and intends to keep doing so?


Midwestern Guy

The Hebrew translation is published by the Community of Christ formerly known as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ.

The online store at LDS.org lists a dizzying array of languages for the BoM, and Hebrew and Yiddish are not on the list. That can’t be an oversight. I guess they did agree not to publish a Hebrew edition of the BoM.

Neither was Reformed Egyptian.

It did not hurt that they gave a huge sum of money to the creation of the Holocaust center in Washington right after the mayor of Jerusalem visited SLC.

I would think that Israeli scholars might want a Hebrew translation of the BoM in the same way that they might want Hebrew translations of works from other religions.

I was suddenly struck with this question: how does a Jew resign from being Jewish?

I’m more interested in knowing how I can become Mexican. Can I take classes or something?

bradley Wrote:
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> I’m more interested in knowing how I can become
> Mexican. Can I take classes or something?

https://www.wikihow.com/Become-a-Citizen-of-Mexico

elderolddog Wrote:
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> I was suddenly struck with this question: how does
> a Jew resign from being Jewish?

Depends on how they "became" a Jew.

If they were born of a Jewish mother, then they are (if they want to be) "always" Jewish--even if they convert to another religion, because they always have an option to renounce the other religion and go back to claiming their fundamental Jewishness because they were born of a Jewish female.

If they are a convert to Judaism, they just stop doing Jewish things or claiming Jewish status. If their behavior or public speech becomes intolerably egregious, a Bet Din (Jewish rabbinical court) could potentially revoke their conversion, but at least theoretically, that person MIGHT subsequently be able to convince another Bet Din to restore their Jewish status.

Basically: you just stop claiming to be a Jew, you stop identifying with being Jewish, you stop doing Jewish things, and/or you convert to another religion.

In real life, and especially during my own lifetime, there have been numerous born Jews who then decided to become Hindus, Muslims, Christians of different kinds, Buddhists, etc.

Subsequently, these conversions to non-Jewish religions have often resulted in those persons becoming tired (or whatever) of the "new" religion, which then led them to seek return to Judaism.

If criminal acts (political actions, etc.) were not involved, most all of them were able to return to the tribe with not too much t'shuvah (repentance), or resistance (depending on the actual rabbinical authorities involved in the returns to full Jewish status).



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/04/2021 10:47PM by Tevai.

You can thank Teddy Kollek. Kollek was to Jerusalem what Mayor Daley was to Chicago. He was always vocal about Christian proselytisation of Jews, and made statement to the effect that "we don't need to lose any more Jews." There were others too.

Because of the pressure, the LDS caved in and stopped.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_Kollek

As someone else has said, the COC has done its own version.

I was always told by Mormons that proselytizing is against the law in Israel, and that the LDS cult, being so law-abiding and respectful, complied.

But is this really the case?

Recently I read an article about Jehovah's Witnesses in Israel. They do have a presence there, they convert people (including Jews), they translate their materials into Hebrew etc. (Even children's videos. It's on their website.)

Apparently JWs are not ashamed of "their" gospel, whereas Mormons act in politically convenient ways, even if it means not doing their job of "saving soul".