I know that courts believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast. Still doesn’t make it less silly. And one may hope that once in a while sudden sanity strikes a particular judge.
Ah, so you’ve abandoned your earlier claims (or Just Asking Questions, whatever term you prefer) and confusion and agree that any judges who said it’s a religious symbol were mistaken? Or are you going to argue, in public no less, that the Magen David became a religious symbol to the Jews, despite the Jews’ actual beliefs… because a judge said so? Are you just painting yourself into a corner, and you aren’t going to bring yourself to admit error?
"I’m not sure what the facts are, but I’m prepared to be difficult about them. "
I think what he’s trying to argue (and I don’t express an opinion as to whether he’s doing a good job) is that, notwithstanding what actual Jews think about the Magen David, the US government considers the Magen David a religious symbol for the purposes of laws about religious symbols. So whether or not it really is is irrelevant. The government hath so decreed it.
If you are trying to create a pretzel with your statements, you’ve succeeded. It’s really very simple here: Out of three possible designs for a Holocaust memorial, they picked one that prominently displays the Star of David. Several people have come forth with evidence that they think shows that the Star of David has been used as a religious symbol by others that include the U.S. Government itself on occasion. If the courts*(a U.S. court of law that is, not a gathering of rabbis) decides that, besides being a tribal symbol, it is also a religious symbol, then they might have to go back and look at the possibility of using one of the other two designs previously considered. This doesn’t have jack to do with the U.S. courts deciding on the personal beliefs of Jews-it has to do with how the symbol has been used by various groups (including, once again, the U.S. Government itself).
The big problem with that, though, is that it’s, once again, the majority deciding to define a minority without paying any attention to what the minority group actually believes or thinks. The majority is appropriating a Jewish symbol and defining what it means for Jews without actually caring what Jews think.
Mr. Libeskind himself(the designer of the proposed monument) told the Ohio Statehouse Holocaust Memorial Artist Selection Committee that he himself was concerned whether the Star of David constituted a religious symbol. Various court cases over the years declared it to be a religious symbol-my cite is page two of the first link in the OP.
edited to add: This isn’t about the majority defining a minority’s beliefs-this is about consistency of law.
Ever since the first court case said that the Star of David constituted a religious symbol, it’s been about the majority defining a minority’s beliefs. Even if the court says that the Star of David is a religious symbol, it’s factually not one. And if the law is consistently wrong, then maybe they should fix the law so that it doesn’t say false things.
FFRF (and you) misrepresented what Libeskind said. Here it is from the cite that they provided:
Mr. Libeskind told the panel he, too, deliberated on whether the star was a religious symbol and concluded in discussions with other experts that, in the memorial’s instance, it is a reference to the star used by the Nazis to label Jews.
There is no indication that Libeskind thinks that it is a religious symbol.
You said he was “concerned whether the Star of David constituted a religious symbol”. The quote shows no such “concern”. He “deliberated” - which is what all the posters on this thread do as well, including those that reject the idea that it is a religious symbol.
Think why FFRF changed the word to the “concern” instead of quoting their source exactly. That may explain to you the difference.
The FFRF really sounds like it has no idea what the holocaust was about based on those statement for two reasons: Jews were the primary victims of the holocaust, and of the five million non-Jewish victims they didn’t even mention the second largest group of victims by far, something that the inscription for the monument provided by Jackmannii
Inspired by the Ohio soldiers who were part of the American liberation and survivors who made Ohio their home.
If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world.
In remembrance the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust and millions more including prisoners of war, ethnic and religious minorities, homosexuals, the mentally ill, the disabled, and political dissidents who suffered under Nazi Germany. *
not only includes, it’s the first of the millions of others mentioned: prisoners of war, more specifically the millions of Soviet prisoners murdered by deliberate neglect by the Nazis. Slavic peoples were only slightly above Jews as subhumans to the Nazis. From the US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
The Nazis weren’t killing Jews because of their religion, they were killing them because of their race. They didn’t care one whit if you were a practicing Jew or not when they forced them to wear a Star of David or when they committed mass murder against them.
What the FFRF seems to be concerned with is displaying what the courts have already determined to be a religious symbol on public land when there was no need to do so because other designs were available. I wonder if it is possible that one of the reasons that particular design was chosen over the others was because it would challenge the court’s rulings.
Video and transcript of show about this topic that contains and more information about the selection committee and several different viewpoints from speakers about the memorial’s possible entanglement with the establishment clause.
Apparently the people who installed those memorials thought their importance transcended national boundaries.
Whatever public funds were spent on installing or maintaining them sound like a far better investment than what’s been spent installing and maintaining monuments to the Confederacy on public property.**
**not to mention a much better use of taxpayer money than to defend a lawsuit aimed at preventing a Confederate monument from being removed from public property.
Easy. Two things are necessary to demonstrate any symbol is a “religious” symbol (rather than any other sort of symbol).
A history of the religion in question and of the people who follow it, that that these people traditionally and historically treated the symbol as a religious symbol.
An explaination as to what, in fact, the symbol “symbolized”, and thus its religious nature.
To give examples of the latter:
The Cross is a Christian religious symbol because it stands for the crucifiction of Jesus, who later rose from the dead. This is a foundational part of the Christian religion.
The tablets of the law is a Jewish religious symbol, because it symbolizes the ten commandments handed down personally to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. This is a foundational part of the Jewish religion.
What does the star of David symbolize? Well, nothing religious. It is traditionally associated with the heraldic design (allegedly) used by King David on his shield.
King David is an important quasi-historical figure in Judaism, but he is not (repeat not) a religious figure, like Jesus or Moses. He’s a powerful king, not a prophet or the son of God. In fact, he’s not even all that “good”, as he cheerfully committed adultery and murder in the Biblical account.
The symbol is a bit of heraldry, and references no part of the Jewish faith. The symbol is, in short, no more “religious” than the use of lions on the coat of arms of England.
Moreover, there is an obvious reason to use the symbol on a holocaust memorial: it references the Nazi use of the symbol to mark out Jews. The Nazis of course cared not a bit whether said Jews were religious or not, as to them Judaism was a matter of “race”, not religion.
Since the courts have previously established that it is a religious symbol(hasn’t anyone read the link in the OP?), all this history is interesting, but probably doesn’t have any legal standing…which, after all, is what this is all about.