Hello, Micheal…Please forward this to Mikey

Hi Mikey,

My hopes are that you receive this letter personally.

After reading about you and your lovely family and what happened to your son in the U.S. Military. My heart broke for you and your family. I cannot believe & do not understand anyone who would call themselves “Christian” and say such mean things to a young man trying to serve his country.

I too, have a son in the U.S. Military. And would not want these mean and hateful things said to him either. I would get angry and want to persecute the ones who said it.

I do understand your hurt in this matter.

But please do not judge all under one banner……

I have an honest love and deep respect for  Jewish people and their beautiful country Israel .Whom I support with my prayers and my money.

The hateful things said to your son, are nothing more than the same hateful anti-Semitic remarks that helped fuel the Crusades, the Inquisition and Hitler’s Holocaust.

G-d has given me a deep love and admiration for the Jewish people. And you and your family being Jewish, My G-d compels me to hold you up in prayer.

G-d’s Word tells me that G-d will, “Bless those who bless Israel (The Jews), and curse those who curse Israel ( The Jews).  Nations have rose and fell on how they have treated The Jews, G-d’s chosen people.

My prayer for you is, that you do not become bitter and heartless and use the same hateful rhetoric on christians that was used on your son. Don’t stoop to their level. There is another way…….

And my deep, heart-felt honest  prayer is that You will find it….. : )   I do mean this from the bottom of my heart.

My  Prayers are with You, (name withheld)….

Please feel free to email me back. I know you are a very busy person but it would be greatly appreciated.
“PRAY FOR THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM”

Dear (name withheld):

Mikey asked me to respond to your email – which he did indeed receive and read personally along with several thousand others today.  I have been a friend of Mikey’s for more than 10 years.  In that time I have come to know that Mikey is very respectful of other people’s faiths while being dedicated to his own.   I am a Christian and he is Jewish.  We do share one membership.  We are both conservatives.  Judging all under one banner is the last thing I would expect from him.

Mikey called me on his cell phone on his way to Parent Weekend at the USAF Academy that weekend when life changed forever for the Weinsteins.  He was so enthusiastic when he spoke about his 2^nd son to follow him at the Academy.  But the next time we spoke he was a different Mikey.  His usual jovial and upbeat mood was replaced with anger and frustration – the kind to which any parent who has seen his child intentionally hurt can relate.  I became angry too.  Instead of cursing Curtis and making him march in what was called the “heathen squad” during the normal time for temple services, the Christian officers and chaplains should have offered to drive him to temple services on Saturday and taken him to Starbucks afterward.   If their intent was to approach him about his faith and explain their faith, would that not have been a more effective way to start the conversation?  Their reprehensible treatment of this young man angered me not only because of all those hateful slurs but also because those chaplains, staff and officers at the AF Academy had trampled on more than those young cadets.  They attacked the Constitution. Their continued actions threaten our freedom of religion too.

I assure you, (name withheld), that this is the heart of the mission of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  The MRFF is not rooted in bitterness  but in the absolute confidence in and allegiance to our Constitution and in the support of our military members.  I am a Christian as are many of the MRFF supporters. Many of the clients who seek help from MRFF are also Christians.  These brave men and women who when seeking spiritual guidance from their chaplains have been told they are not “Christian enough” or that they need to be baptized again because they were in the wrong denomination.  There has also been coercion to attend Bible studies and worship services.   From the number of complaints received by the MRFF, the indication is that some of our high level military officers are either contributing to the undermining of our Constitution or they are permitting it.  In either case they are wrong, and we must come to the defense of all the military men and women to whom we owe so much.  If one of my grandchildren is honored with a nomination to one of our military academies, I hope he is not placed in the heathen squad because he is not a member of the denomination that the military leaders choose to support and empower in that decade.  That is the very reason we cannot allow our government or our leaders to ignore our Constitution.

The free choice of faith is the core principle that distinguishes our system from others.  We must defend this principle.  It is the right thing to do, and my friend Mikey Weinstein is the right man to lead the fight.  This is not now nor has it ever been a mission to malign any one religion but to fight for our Constitution which guarantees our right to choose our own religion without regard to what the “king” chooses.