Posthumous Baptism of Jews to Stop

The Mormon church has rededicated itself to end the practice of posthumously baptizing Jews, an agreement that apparently had been breached since it was made with Jewish leaders seven years ago, leaders from both faiths said Wednesday.

At a meeting Tuesday in New York City, the church reaffirmed its commitment to removing Holocaust victims and other deceased Jews from its International Genealogical Index, said Ernest Michel, chairman of the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors.

The index is a list of about 600 million names used by Mormons to perform ceremonies offering proxy baptisms on behalf of the dead.

Mormon church leaders requested the meeting after several Jewish organizations complained that the faith had broken the 1995 agreement to keep deceased Jews -- including those who had died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II-- from being included in the temple ceremonies, Michel said.

The Mormon church collects names from records worldwide to use in temple rituals, during which Mormon stand-ins are dunked in water to offer the dead voluntary entry into the Mormon religion.

After the 1995 agreement, the church removed about 400,000 names of dead Jews, mostly Holocaust victims, from the database.

“When the church is made aware of documented concerns, action is taken in compliance with the agreement,” said D. Todd Christofferson, a church elder.

Independent researcher Helen Radkey, who prepared a report for Michel that alleged that the church had broken the 1995 agreement, said that her recent research had found that at least 20,000 Jews had been posthumously baptized.

Radkey has been researching Jews included in the Mormon lists since 1999, when she found the famous diarist Anne Frank and her extended family listed as being baptized.

She said that she is doubtful the church can keep all Jewish names out of the database.

“It is totally unrealistic,” she said.

“Most Mormons who handle the processing, including deletions of Jewish names from the [Mormon] database, would not know a Jewish name from the back end of a hoe.”