Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, the President of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, is quoted as having said this at a past so-called “Million Mom March”:
Is the need for sensible gun-control a religious issue? You bet it is.
The indiscriminate distribution of guns is an offense against God and humanity.
Controlling guns is not only a political matter, it is a solemn religious obligation. Our gun-flooded society has turned weapons into idols, and the worship of idols must be recognized for what it is-blasphemy. And the only appropriate religious response to blasphemy is sustained moral outrage.
“Turned weapons into idols”? I don’t know much about Jewish religious thinking, but this seems to me like a metaphor getting out of hand.
Also, I wonder whether people on the left who condemn the Religious Right for supposedly “trying to mix religion and politics,” or “trying to force their religious opinions on others,” would equally condemn the Rabbi on these grounds. I doubt it, and I think their reaction to the Rabbi is the correct one: The Rabbi is just as entitled to turn his religious views into law as secular anti-gun people are entitled to turn their secular views into law — and religious gun-rights defenders are just as entitled to turn their religious views about the propriety of self-defense into law as secular gun-rights defenders are with regard to their views.
The question should be whether the arguments make sense and are persuasive, and whether the proposed results are morally sound — which is to say, who is right as to the merits of the proposal. (And of course people, both religious Jews and otherwise, may find the Rabbi’s views unpersuasive.) But religious people are as entitled to make religious arguments about the proposal as secular people are entitled to make secular arguments.
Thanks to Dan Gifford for the pointer.
UPDATE: Clayton Cramer makes a good point:
[W]here does Rabbi Yoffee get this “idol” image of guns? I would suggest that it is rather like the way that the “blood libel” about Jews remained popular for so long in European civilization: Yoffee probably doesn’t know anyone who owns a gun. He probably doesn’t even know anyone who knows anyone who owns a gun. The more isolated you get from a group, the easier it is to either imagine the worst of members of that group (the negative stereotype of blacks as sex-crazed criminals), or imagine the best of members of that group (all Native Americans are spiritual defenders of Mother Earth). A little contact goes a long ways to correcting these stereotypes.
I’m normally not wild about speculating about speakers’ motivations, but this speculation seems to be by far the most plausible.
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