The Mormon Candidate - a Novel (37 page)

“What did they say to that?”

“A
gain, the
Mormons
were
apologetic
and conciliatory
. W
e entered another settlement agreement
in two
thousand and one
.
But they
continue to do it,
and we
continue to
protest.
”

“Why d
o
you keep going?”

Ginsburg
pointed a
t
the
photo.
“
For my parents,
I shall not rest
.
I owe it to
them to protect Jewish victims from s
uch abuse.”

“
Where is the abuse if
you don’t believe in
the validity of the ritual
?”

“You miss the point. This is not some
esoteric
religious
ceremony
the Mormons
engage in
for their own spiritual
fulfillment
.
Rather, t
he massive effort to baptize
millions of
dead people is a calculated ma
rketing
tool
for the living—lo
ng term!
”

Ben laughed. “Baptizing the dead as a marketing
devic
e?
It’s ridiculous.
”

“
It’s b
rilliant,
that’s what it is.
Imagine this scenario: A
hundred years from now, a young Mormon missionary meets my great-granddaughter and tells her about Joseph Smith and
his golden tablets and
the Celestial Kingdom
. S
he rolls her eyes
. H
e pulls out his iPad, version fifty-seven, which
will
probably have built-in holograms, and shows her that her ancestors—my parents!—were Mormons, together with other famous converts such as
Rabbi Herzog, Chagall, and Irving Berlin. How’s that for a marketing pitch to Jewish
prospects
?”

“Pretty strong,” Ben said, “but my understanding is that
Mormons believe that
the posthumous baptism is only an offer, an invitation to souls in the afterlife
world
to join the Mormon faith, accept Joseph Smith’s
g
ospel
,
and win eternal salvation.”

“True,”
Ginsburg
said
.
“
T
hat’s what the nice guys in Salt Lake City told us—it’s only an invitation,
an act of charity for the dead who couldn’t embrace Smith’s message during their lives
, but the souls can refuse, and then nothing happens, right?”

“That’s my understanding.”

“Then why are the
dead
listed the same way as regular
s
aints?”

“
They are?”

“Listen, what t
he Mormons do
is bigger than anyone realize
s
. T
hey’re collecting records of
dead people’s
names from every
country
in the wor
l
d—Catholics, Lutherans,
Baptists,
Russian Orthodox, Armenians, Muslims, Hindus,
as wells as war victims, natural disaster
list
s, and royal tombs,
not to forget
Adolf Hitler
,
Charlie Chaplin,
Joseph Stalin, Mother Teresa,
and
every pope, rabbi,
i
mam
,
and
a
yatollah
—all of whom
they’ve
baptized by proxy into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But
the ritual
s aren’t
merely invitation
s
to join
. That’s just not
true
, b
ecause LDS Church members
hip
rolls
include
all the names, over
a million
Jew
ish
Holocaust victims
and
tens of
millions of other
s, who are
listed as
Latter-day Saints. There’s no notation that the
y
never actually accepted the Mormon
faith
, no distinction between
real baptisms
of
living
, willing
converts and
posthumous baptisms done by proxy for
dead
people
. A hundred years from now, who w
ill
remember that my parents
,
or Albert Einstein
,
never in their lif
e
time
accepted th
e Mormon faith?
Who w
ill
be able to step in and defend my parents
—
Jew
i
s
h martyrs!—from
being used as marketing props for Mormon missionaries?”

“I can see why you’re dedicated,” Ben said,
“
but what’s the value of reaching more agreements with the Mormons? T
hey’re
obviously
shameless liars.”

“Not at all
.
Mormons
do not
lie
. I
t’s a sin!”

“Now I’m
really
confused.”

“Welcome to the club.”
Ginsburg
sighed. “Let me tell yo
u something that ha
s
taken me many
years to understand. Mormons are ethical,
wholesome,
upstanding people. They never lie. They always tell the truth. However, their
definition
of the truth is different than
that of
the rest of us.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“What is truth to you?”

“Facts. Reality.”

“
Same for me.
But for the followers of Joseph Smith,
the
truth is
limited to
faith-promoting
facts
.”
Ginsburg
pointed at the easel. “
Mormons
would
never lie
to
grieving Holocaust survivors
.
Rather, t
hey share with us their faith-promoting
version of
the truth.”

“How can there be more than one version of the truth?”

“B
ecause under
LDS Church doctrine
, only
faith-promoting
facts are classified a
s true
. That’s the
only
t
ruth
to them
.
Conversely,
facts that
put the LDS Church in
a
negative light,
facts that deviate from the official version of history, and facts that
create
doubt
s about
the
Mormon faith
in any way,
are
not
faith-promoting
facts
and
are
therefore untrue
.
And
the blanks
left by such facts are filled by Mormons with invented
faith-promoting information, which become the truth no matter what actually happened.
”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“It goes to the root of their young religion. I won’t bore you with details, but the fundamental story of the
Book of Mormon
—that Native Americans are the descendants of
the lost tribes of Israel, who
came to North America in biblical times and built
two
competing civilizations that engaged in extensive warfare—this story was proven to be fiction through archeology, genetic
testing
, and
the
Native American
s
’ own oral history
and ancient customs, all of which bear no trace of Israelite roots
. It’s complete fiction. That’s why the basic requirement of being a Mormon is the ability to deny historic facts and ignore current science.
”

“It’s not very different
than
other faiths,
” Ben said. “There’s not a shred of archeological evidence for the hundreds of thousands of Hebrews who supposedly
built the Egyptian pyramids
, crossed the Red Sea,
and
spent forty years in the Sinai Desert.”

“True, but
the Mormon story is less than two centuries old, harder to excuse contradictions by the passage of time. Consequently they
engage in
heavy-
handed suppression from the top
.
”
Ginsburg
pulled a volume from a shelf.
No
Man
Knows My History – The
Life
of Joseph Smith
, by
Fawn Brodie
.
“Th
is
author
,
” he said, “
who also wr
ote
an excellent biography of T
homas Jefferson,
was a devout Mormon
. She
taught at Brigham Young University
and
spent years researching original documents, including
Smith’s own writings and journals, his wife’s papers
,
and family member
s’
letters,
court
records
,
early LDS C
hurch records,
s
aints’
personal letters
and journals
, and newspaper
s
of the era. The resulting biography was probably the most meticulously researched work ever produced about the founder of Mormonism. Every fact was
grounded
in original, authenticated documents, every description and statement checked and rechecked to make sure it was factually correct.
”

“And?”

“
Fawn Brodie
was
put on trial
by
her
Mormon Church
. Her book, her facts,
were not faith-
promoting
and therefore, by definition, untrue
. Her descriptions of Joseph Smith’s
treasure
-digging
trickery
,
his con
artist
enterprises,
his criminal conviction
for fraud
, the evolution of his stories about encounters with angels, Jesus
,
and God, the
multiple
versions he told about ho
w he
had
found
—and
then
lost—the
golden tablet
s
and
how he
translated
them
into
the
Book of Mormon
, his militarism and plans to
decimate
the US
A
rmy and
set up a theocracy in
America
, his obsessive sexual exploits, masqueraded as
divinely ordained
polygamy
to seduce
young
servant
girls a
s well as
the mature wives of
his own friends, all these facts were not faith-promoting and therefore
false
.
But when
Brodie
refused to denounce her own work,
her trial ended in conviction, and
she was excommunicat
ed
.”

“
How can they do it?
” Ben
flipped through the pages of footnotes at the end of the book. “How can they deny reality?”