opinions & letters
How Voluntary Were Those
Voluntary Prayers?
BY RABBI CHARLES ARIAN
JBryson / iStock / Getty Images Plus
Photo by Rabbi Batya Glazer
T wenty-five years ago, I spent
almost a year living and teaching
at a Trappist monastery. I got to know
the brothers quite well. Most of the year
was quite comfortable and pleasant,
but the one moment that stands out as
not being so was attending the Easter
Vigil. The liturgy of the Easter Vigil con-
tains readings from both the Hebrew
Scriptures and the New Testament,
but does so in a way that makes the
Jewish story simply a prelude to the
Christian one — as if our story has no
value in itself. It was very upsetting
and I finally got up and left.

Later that day a number of monks
sought me out and more than one
said to me “as I was sitting there, I
was asking myself how Rabbi Charles
was hearing this.” That’s a part of
what empathy is; hearing something
not only with our own ears but with
those of the other as well.

Last week, the Supreme Court
issued its decision in the case of
Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, and held
that a football coach had the right to pray at the
50-yard line after football games. He was usually
joined by players who had, in theory, voluntarily
decided to join their coach in prayer.

I’ve written and taught a lot in the last few
months about the tension inherent between the
Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment
Clause of the First Amendment. The government
should not prevent people from practicing their
religion, but they must also not create the impres-
sion that the government is endorsing religion
in general or a specific religion. The Bremerton
School Board felt that players could feel pressure
to join Coach Kennedy in prayer and this violated
the Establishment Clause, but the Supreme Court
majority held that by preventing Kennedy from
holding his prayer meetings it was violating his
freedom of religious exercise.

I went to a public school in New Jersey that was
almost entirely white and 90 percent Christian,
mostly Catholic. One of the very few non-white
students in our class was a Latina girl who was a
Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe
that national flags are contrary to the biblical
prohibition of idolatry and they do not pledge
allegiance or stand for the national anthem. While
everyone else in the class stood for the Pledge of
Allegiance every morning, Laura sat quietly and
respectfully at her desk.

It was only much later in life that I realized how
courageous Laura was and how difficult this
must have been for her. It’s relatively easy for six
Christian justices to hold that Christian prayer held
by a coach does not violate the Establishment
Clause and that students who don’t choose to
participate won’t feel alienated or penalized. But
anyone who has been a teenager knows that
peer pressure is real, and anyone who has been
involved in high school sports knows not to alien-
ate the coach. I cannot imagine being a Jewish
or Muslim or atheist football player in Bremerton,
competing with others on the team for playing
time, and pondering whether or not to participate
in this “voluntary” prayer.

Empathy is asking the question, “How would I
feel if the shoe were on the other foot?” We have
a real empathy deficit in this country and it is
growing. JE
Rabbi Charles L. Arian leads Kehilat Shalom in
Gaithersburg, Maryland.

letters Vote for Mastriano?
I have a question for Richard Tems: Do you intend
to vote for Doug Mastriano, a man who consorts
with antisemites like the Fosdicks — conspiracy
proponents of anti-Jewish propaganda about
Jewish space lasers — whose ideas build on
ancient canards about Jewish control of the world
(“Jews Debate Mastriano’s Christian Nationalist
Beliefs,” June 23)?
Are you a Jew first or a Republican first? JE
Emily Solomon Farrell
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