The LDS Church, prodded once again to honor its 1995 agreement to halt proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims and other deceased Jews, will strip the names of more than 200 Jewish people from Mormon genealogical records.
On that list is a veritable "Who's Who" of the 20th century's most notable Jews, among them Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; David Ben-Gurion, first prime minister of Israel; and more than a dozen relatives of Anne Frank, the Nazi death camp victim whose World War II diary became a staple of Holocaust literature.
"These people were born Jews, they lived as Jews and many of them died because they were Jews," Aaron Breitbart, senior researcher for the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, said Tuesday. "They would not have chosen to be baptized Mormons in life, and there is no reason they would want to be baptized by proxy in death."
He confirmed that under a deal negotiated over the past several weeks a "list of a couple hundred names" to be deleted was faxed to church officials in Salt Lake City on Monday afternoon.
Helen Radkey, a Salt Lake City genealogist, brought the ongoing problem to the attention of the Wiesenthal Center.
Breitbart said the new pact also provides for Wiesenthal Center staff to work with the LDS Church on ways to prevent inappropriate Jewish name submissions.
Baptism for the dead is among the sacred rites performed in temples of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Mormons are taught the proxy baptisms provide those in the after-life spirit world the choice to join -- or reject -- the faith.
While intended as a rite to offer salvation to departed, non-Mormon ancestors, more zealous Mormons have sought baptism for prominent historical and religious figures.
LDS Church spokesman Dale Bills said that since the 1995 agreement with various Jewish groups, church genealogists have stripped hundreds of thousands of Jewish names from baptismal records.
The only exceptions to the church's directive to stop baptisms for departed Jews are direct ancestors of living Mormons or when the deceased's immediate family gives written consent.
However, in a database of billions of names run primarily by volunteers and open to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of amateur genealogists, the task so far has proven impossible, Bills said.
Bills also said church genealogists are engaged in efforts to find a means to filter out Jewish dead from LDS baptismal records in the future. Jewish leaders, here and abroad, say they will be watching.
Rabbi Benny Zippel of Salt Lake City's Orthodox Bais Menachem Chabad Lubavitch synagogue was astounded to learn the hero of his own sect -- Ba'al Shem Tov, an 18th century Polish rabbi who founded the Hasidic Jewish movement -- had been baptized a Mormon.
"The basic ingredient for a conversion to any religion is the perfect knowledge and perfect consent of the person who is converting to abandon his or her previous faith in order to embrace the new one," he said.
Rabbi Frederick Wenger of Salt Lake City's Congregation Kol Ami applauded the new initiative, though he underscored the need for the LDS Church to "alert all of its members to the offense to Jewish sensitivity caused by posthumous baptisms of prominent Jews and Holocaust victims."