Monday, December 11, 2006
NO MORE CHRISTMAS TREES AT THE AIRPORT
A Chabad Lubavitch Rabbi, Elazar Bogomilsky (Bogomilsky??), hired a lawyer and threatened to sue unless the Seattle airport added a menorah to its Christmas tree display. The airport called his bluff and dismantled the trees, leaving the airport holiday neutral. Now the Rabbi's lawyers are afraid "that the Jewish community will be portrayed as the Grinch". (Well duh...!)
"Harvey Grad, the rabbi's attorney, said the vitriol against Bogomilsky is misplaced, emphasizing that the rabbi neither objected to the trees nor said he found them offensive" according to The Seattle Times. "The last thing we need is anyone thinking that Jews want to end the celebration of Christmas on public property," Grad said.
That is somewhat disingenuous. Chabad Lubavitch is a promoter of the Noahide Laws. According to Bryan J. Ellison who explains the Noahide Laws at noahide.com:
Noachides may not observe any religious holidays outside the rabbinical traditions of Torah -- most especially including such Christian holidays as X-mas, Easter, Halloween, All Saint's Day, Good Friday, Ash Wednesday, and probably even the "new year" (January 1st). Alien religious holidays are forbidden even under the minimum of the Noachide code; these are violations of the commandment against idolatry.
Ellison believes
Our generation, as the Lubavitcher Rebbe has repeatedly declared, is the last generation of exile and darkness, and the first generation of Moshiach (the Messiah) and the Redemption. All of us -- Jews and Noachides -- have an urgent responsibility to transform the world immediately in order to bring Moshiach, and this involves going well beyond the minimum of the Law.
The Noahide Laws being promoted by Chabad Lubivitch will not treat Christians kindly. This Seattle Airport dust-up may be just the beginning.
In its own defense, the airport claims employees are too busy during this season to be "cultural anthropologists" who sort out every religious tradition in order to provide a symbol for it. They plan to address the question of religiously correct holiday displays after the holidays are over.
Meanwhile Benedict proposes that Catholics display religious symbols in public buildings such as schools, courthouses, hospitals and prisons so that God will be present in community life. I guess he hasn't heard about American religious correctness yet.
But then, who needs a Christmas tree in an airport police state anyway. Most of them wouldn't clear the metal detectors.
