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From Altercation:

Name: David A Snyder

Hometown: Edison, NJ

Dr. Vaidhyanathan (and Dr. Alterman, too),

Actually, Justice Scalia's position on the meaning of the 10 Commandments is not, as I, a liberal Jew, understand the Jewish position. Justice Scalia claims: "All of them, moreover (Islam included), believe that the Ten Commandments were given by God to Moses, and are divine prescriptions for a virtuous life." Jews, who do not consider non-Jews (many of whom are quite virtuous) obligated to follow such practices as the Sabbath, certainly do not feel the 10 Commandments to be necessary prescriptions for leading a virtuous life. Moreover, we feel that we Jews (alas, not all of us virtuous) are obligated to follow not 10, but 613 commandments, so the 10 Commandments are hardly sufficient for prescribing a virtuous life. From a Jewish point of view, about which Scalia acts as if he knows so much, what Scalia has said is nonsense if not blasphemy. To have a Supreme Court ruling, the law of the land, based on a religious opinion as to the meaning of a religious document, an opinion which some would find skirting the line of blasphemy would hardly respect the free exercise of religion -- it is a good thing that this was merely a dissent rather than a ruling, then.

As a Jew, I am tired of Christians speaking for my beliefs as if we are some subsidiary of their faith. We Jews do not feel that the 10 Commandments are mere suggestions to be posted everywhere because they sound good, but are part of a religious contract with God obligating us to 613 classes of obligations. For people who don't observe the Sabbath (so who's going to be the first to put Scalia to a religious test and ask him if he observes the Sabbath -- and assuming he doesn't, ask him whether, since he is breaking one of the 10 Commandments, how he can be virtuous), who are very blithe about taking oaths to the point where they risk taking God's name in vain, etc., to insist that the 10 Commandments be represented in graven images everywhere is nothing short of idolatry. When Jews, Muslims and secular folk treat Christian symbols so carelessly, we are accused of being anti-Christian. Does this make Justice Scalia and others who offend me as a Jew by being so quick to celebrate graven images of a document they don't really follow anti-Semites?

Finally, I may be accused of being anti-Christian myself here, but if Christians, who believe in the Trinity are monotheists, are not Hindus, who also believe in a fundamental unity of the Divine, also monotheists?

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Name: Brian Kresge
Hometown: Lancaster, PA
Just as Scalia fudged the facts when he insisted erroneously that the Shoah resulted from a secular German state, even though the Reich had its own church with Reich-appointed bishops (he said this with straight face to an Orthodox congregation, no less), he does so again with his dissent. When he lumps Judaism in with the other "monotheistic faiths" (the whole Trinity thing seems to run against monotheism as far as I can tell, but that's neither here nor there), he does Judaism a great disservice. A large percentage of movement-affiliated Jews do not recognize the Ten Commandments as Divine. To lump us all together for the sake of a convenient argument does us a profound disservice. But hey, when has Scalia ever allowed facts to cloud his profundity? Far be it for me to say, but I find the ultimate irony is that for all the talk of honoring the commandments with big and arguably gauche monuments, there's very little call for anyone to obey them, particularly, ahem, when one's duck-hunting buddy goes about deploying, ahem, a military, ahem, to kill, ahem, based, ahem, on what by Mosaic legal standards would constitute "false witness."