By Rabbi Chaim Twerski
As noted last Friday, the state of Louisiana has just made displaying the Ten Commandments in every one of its schools mandatory. And as expected, that is being challenged based on First Amendment grounds.
I received the following message from Rabbi Chaim Twerski, a towering figure here in Chicago who is a Chasidic Rebbe, a Rosh Yeshiva at HTC, and someone whose knowledge of both Limudei Kodesh and Limudei Chol has few peers. It was in response to last week’s post on the subject. With permission - I present here in its entirety:
Your post on Friday included the following statement.
And yet. the idea of mandating biblical passages on the walls of every school seems to violate the separation clause of the first amendment. I don’t see how it doesn’t.
The first amendment was written by a group a Americans who were deeply religious. Even Thomas Jefferson who was not really a Christian (he did not believe in the divinity of J.C.) believed in G-d. The meaning of the first amendment was that the Government would not have a national religion. They took their lesson from the Puritans who had to flee England to practice their method of Christianity. England has a national religion. America was not to have its government associated with any particular type of Chritiananity. Some went so far as to include toleration of religions that are not Christian. However, it was the furthest from the minds of any of the authors of that amendment to tolerate atheism. It is freedom of religion not freedom from religion.
In fact, the emergence of public schooling in the 1840’s had it main purpose as to enable the poorest to be able to read the Bible. This was to improve the culture and to infuse religiosity in the lower classes.
That separation of church and state should come to disallow states to sponsor and assist religious institutions was an invention of the mid twentieth century by those who were anti religious. The ACLU, a frequent fighter of legislation that has any benefit to any religion or even to religion as a whole, is an organization that is opposed to religion of any type. They are not for freedom of religion, but fight mightily for freedom from religion. They would much prefer that we not have the words “In G-d We Trust”, on the face of our coinage. If they could they would destroy every copy of the Declaration of Independence for including “endowed by their Creator” as the basis for inalienable rights of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Furthermore, the ten articles of the bill of rights were meant only to limit the national government, not the governments of the states. The inclusion of these to the states was a later innovation. From the viewpoint of the founders, Illinois can have a Christian state religion and Utah a Mormon state religion.
The word and phrase “separation of religion and state” does not appear in the constitution.