Wreaths Across America

From: (name withheld) Subject: Wreaths Across America Date: December 16, 2021 at 9:54:31 PM MSTTo: “[email protected]” <[email protected]>

Dear Mikey,   Thanks for all the good work you do to keep the right wing “Bible thumpers” from taking over the military.     FYI, I’m a left wing Episcopalian married to a lovely Jewish atheist (also a Professor at Stanford).  Only thing I have ever disagreed with you:  I think the Christmas wreaths on the veterans’  headstones are OK and my Jewish atheist wife agrees with me! https://www.foxnews.com/us/wreaths-across-america-carpet-bombing-veteran-cemeteries-christian-gang?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=EBB%2012.16.2021&utm_term=Editorial%20-%20Military%20-%20Early%20Bird%20Brief. (I think they may have even had a “secular” Christmas tree in their house in Newark NJ when she grew up—after all it is really a pagan holiday co-opted by the Christians).   Please keep up the good fight!  We are on your side.  Wishing you a lovely holiday

v/r,

(name withheld)

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Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member James Currie

Dear (name withheld):

I have been asked by Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to respond to your recent email.  Thanks for your kind words about the work of the MRFF in protecting the religious freedom of all those who serve our country in uniform. It is a never-ending battle, especially because the forces of conservative Christian religious fundamentalism are waging an ever-greater effort to transform the United States from a non-secular republic into a Christian theocracy. And I assure you, if they were to succeed, the culture that they embody would not be that of “left wing Episcopalian[ism].”

You are absolutely correct in that Christmas as we celebrate it in this country has been accepted by many people as a non-religious holiday. I, too, have Jewish friends who celebrate it, though most of them have adopted Hanukah as the excuse and occasion for giving presents to each other, thus, in a way, changing that holiday, too.

The problem with the wreath, however, is not what it was seen as a thousand years ago, but what it has become more recently. Since perhaps 200 years ago, Christmas wreaths had become accepted as a symbol of the Advent, meaning the Christmas season. When Wreaths Across America (WAA), the organization that is mainly responsible for placing evergreen wreaths on veterans’ graves, started this practice a few years ago, its wreath-layers were apparently instructed to omit wreaths from the identified graves of Jewish veterans. You may know that tombstones in VA cemeteries and at Arlington National Cemetery, which is run by the U.S. Army, can have a religious or non-religious (i.e., atheist) symbol engraved on them, if that’s what the veteran wants. There are currently seventy-four symbols accepted by the VA for placement on a tombstone. Such symbols make it easy for a Jewish or Muslim or Hindu grave to be omitted when it comes to wreath-placement. This was the practice of WAA until recently. Then, when the issue of wreath-placement as a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution became an issue, WAA changed its tune. Now they say that wreaths are non-religious recognitions of honor for all veterans, thus attempting to undo 200 years of recent history. As a historian, I am offended by such machinations.

The fact is, Christmas wreaths are accepted world-wide as symbols of the Advent season, which Christian believers celebrate as the birth-time of Christ (though those of us who have done any reading on the subject know that Christ was most likely born in the spring). Such denigration of religious symbols is quite common. There have even been court cases where it was held that a Latin cross was not really a symbol of Christianity, if you can believe that. The problem is that wreaths are symbols of a particular religion, and the U.S. Government’s allowing any group to go onto the grounds of a government cemetery and placing a religious symbol on the graves there is a clear violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

You are obviously an educated man, so I will allow another educated man to speak to you on this issue. That man was Thomas Jefferson, who knew quite well the two men—George Mason and James Madison—who primarily drafted the First Amendment (Mason) and guided it through Congress (Madison). Here’s what President Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Baptists of Danbury, Conn., in January 1802:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people [that is, the First Amendment] which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”

Please note the phrase “wall of separation between Church & State” which Jefferson coined and which was first expressed by him in this letter. You have undoubtedly heard that phrase before, and it forms the heart of what the MRFF stands for. Protecting that wall of separation is a constant fight. It might seem that placing Christian wreaths on veterans’ graves is a de minimis violation of the First Amendment, not harming anyone. But if your loved one was not of the Christian faith, then placing a Christian symbol on their grave is an insult, not a recognition. These wreaths are but one example of attempts that are being made every day to undermine that wall of separation, and it is incumbent on the MRFF and on all those who believe that we are much the stronger as a country which does not “respect an establishment of religion” to resist such efforts. Our Founders were wise beyond their time, and what they wrote in that First Amendment to the Constitution has served us well during the 230 years since it was adopted.

Col. James T. Currie, USA (Ret.), Ph.D.

Board of Advisors, Military Religious Freedom Foundation

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From: (name withheld)
Subject: Re: Wreaths Across America
Date: December 17, 2021 at 9:47:57 AM MST
To: James Currie <[email protected]>, Mikey Weinstein <[email protected]>

Thanks for your thoughtful response, COL Currie.  I definitely see your points.  Sounds like there was a bit of a profit motive, too… Keep up the good work! Best,

(name withheld)

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Response from MRFF Board Member John Compere

On Dec 17, 2021, at 10:28 AM, John Compere wrote:
(name withheld),
Thank you for your military service & the civility of your communication.
Please try to understand there are families of deceased military veterans who do not want a religious organization to which they do not belong or support profiting, promoting its religion version & marketing itself by presumptuously putting its religious wreaths on the graves of their deceased loved ones without permission. Those families consider it uninvited & unwanted intrusions on the personal burial sites of their deceased family members.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (composed of 85% Christians) represents, when requested, the religious freedom rights of those families to object & prevent what they believe to be thoughtless trespasses on the graves of their deceased family members. We do so because we respect the wishes of those families & the religious organization responsible for the religious wreaths does not. Religious freedom is a shield of protection & never a sword of privilege. For more complete information, please see militaryreligiousfreedom.org.
Sincerely,Brigadier General John Compere, US Army (Retired)Disabled American Veteran (Vietnam Era)Board Member, Military Religious Freedom Foundation

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Response from MRFF Supporter Rabbi Joel Schwartzman

On Dec 17, 2021, at 12:19 PM, Rabbi Joel Schwartzman wrote:

Dear (name withheld),

Mikey asked if I would respond to your kind email.  We especially appreciated its tone.  We have been inundated over this issue with incredible filth, false accusations and even threats.  It was gratifying to read something rational and cogent.

With regard to this wreath laying project, I simply do not agree with your assessment.  Nor, do I believe, would my son and daughter-in-law who teach Constitutional law at the University of Virginia.  This is a clear violation of my First Amendment, Constitutional rights.  At least, it would be until this present SCOTUS might rule on any challenge!

If these aren’t “Christmas wreaths,” then why the rush to place them at this time of year?  Why not choose an anomalous time like September or May?  The association to me, even if this practice would in any way be acceptable, which I contend that it is not, is crystal clear.  I see it as tantamount to what the Mormons have attempted to do by setting forth to convert Jewish dead to Mormonism.  It is a statement not of honor and recognition as you might contend.  It is not a “nice, loving gesture.”  It is rather an imposition of one religion’s symbols, though they might even be pagan, on the graves of those not of that religion or persuasion, whose customs are entirely other.

Many Jews have adopted (pagan) non-Jewish customs.  That’s their right and privilege as free people.  This wreath business is as far from what I would condone as eating pork chops.  So there you have our difference in the understanding of what’s going on here. 

I do not and would not approve of this project in its totality and attempted “inclusiveness.” If, for example, I were to find a wreath on my rabbinic uncle’s grave, I would be offended and even horrified.  He fought in WWII in the Pacific, and would come roaring up out of his grave to reject this symbolic offering.  For, you see and justify this wreath business…and it definitely has been characterized as a business in at least one article which researched the sponsoring, “charitable group.”  That they allegedly are using donations to buy wreaths from a business that they themselves own, is, to my mind, using a money making scheme that involves an acceptant, volunteer naïve public.   

I, as a Jew and a rabbi, see this whole enterprise entirely differently than you and your wife.  Jews do not place wreaths on our graves to honor their dead.  We place stones on the grave markers and light yahrzeit candles which are sold at any super-market at graveside.  Wreaths are wholly foreign to my Jewish practice and to my sensitivities.

If I haven’t made the case well enough, then we can simply accept that we aren’t going to agree.  But, again to me, there is a clear violation of the First Amendment, Constitutional rights of people who do not want these symbols, however they might be characterized, on their graves.  In this aspect, this is a gesture filled with misdirection and a clear level of chutzpah that impinges and alienates as much as it may be asserted to the contrary.

Be well,

Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman

Ch, Col, (Ret), USAF

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