Much is being written about the late Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court justice who passed away over the weekend. Much of the "talk" is of a political nature as a debate has ensued in Washington as to whether President Obama should appoint a replacement or wait for the next President to do so. Of course, it's the President's job to appoint justices to the highest court in the land, regardless of whether there is less than a year left in his term.
Some liberals immediately took to social media to gloat about Scalia's passing, knowing that an Obama replacement would shake up the court and lean it toward liberal decisions. I saw a couple of posts humorously playing on the Hebrew phrase we say when someone dies, "Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet" (blessed is the true judge). Scalia was generally not liked by Jewish people as his very conservative rulings often came into conflict with the Jewish community's feelings with regard to freedom of religious expression. In a 2009 article in the Jewish Daily Forward, J.J. Goldberg wrote that Scalia is bad for the Jews and laments his legal opinion about an eight-foot metal cross erected as a war memorial.
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, writing on the Religion News Service website, did a wonderful job criticizing those who gloated over this news. Salkin writes, "To all of my fellow liberals: I know that you didn’t like Antonin Scalia’s rulings. We get it. Frankly, I don’t blame you. I found Scalia’s positions on church-state relations, sexuality, guns, abortion, death penalty, and pretty much everything else to be very problematic... Because, based on what I am seeing on social media, there has been a lot of inappropriate snark about his sudden passing." Salkin goes on to demonstrate how Jewish tradition informs us about how to handle the death of a person we don’t like.
Some liberals immediately took to social media to gloat about Scalia's passing, knowing that an Obama replacement would shake up the court and lean it toward liberal decisions. I saw a couple of posts humorously playing on the Hebrew phrase we say when someone dies, "Baruch Dayan Ha'Emet" (blessed is the true judge). Scalia was generally not liked by Jewish people as his very conservative rulings often came into conflict with the Jewish community's feelings with regard to freedom of religious expression. In a 2009 article in the Jewish Daily Forward, J.J. Goldberg wrote that Scalia is bad for the Jews and laments his legal opinion about an eight-foot metal cross erected as a war memorial.
Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin, writing on the Religion News Service website, did a wonderful job criticizing those who gloated over this news. Salkin writes, "To all of my fellow liberals: I know that you didn’t like Antonin Scalia’s rulings. We get it. Frankly, I don’t blame you. I found Scalia’s positions on church-state relations, sexuality, guns, abortion, death penalty, and pretty much everything else to be very problematic... Because, based on what I am seeing on social media, there has been a lot of inappropriate snark about his sudden passing." Salkin goes on to demonstrate how Jewish tradition informs us about how to handle the death of a person we don’t like.
