I'm in ur Tabernacle, baptizing ur jews.

Elie Wiesel is angry at the Mormon Church for performing posthumous baptisms on jews who died during the holocaust. He is angry because the act "offends" him. And I'm not sure why Elie Wiesel would invest the time and effort required to be offended by this; I don't know why he cares.

Picture this event: You're standing around a tub that looks something like this:


One Mormon acts as a proxy for the deceased. Let's imagine that a little Mormon girl wears a nametag that says 'Anne Frank'. A Mormon priest says some words at this girl, she is bewetted, and then the ceremony ends.

Why is that offensive?

First of all, it's not as if you were required to attend; they didn't do it on your front lawn. Some people you've never met said some words at a little girl you don't know at a location at which you've never been. That hardly seems offensive.

Second of all, if you're a jew, then you think Mormons are full of shit. Theologically, you aren't worried that this act is going to suck Anne Frank out of Jewish heaven and place her in Mormon Paradise; the act doesn't do anything to Anne Frank. It is, in every sense, an empty gesture.

So why the fuck does this matter; why get offended about this? I can understand being offended by Nazis, since they did something to Jews. But a bunch of Mormons saying some words at a wet girl wearing an 'Anne Frank' nametag? That seems laughable and goofy rather than offensive.

The fact that Elie Wiesel cares about this, that he's trying to get Romney to denounce it, seems to indicate that Weisel takes this kind of thing seriously. And if he takes Mormon posthumous baptism seriously, then that probably means that he takes Mormonism seriously.

Which would an odd thing for Elie Wiesel to do.