World Religions News

(RNS) — In his statement about International Holocaust Remembrance Day last week, Vice President JD Vance omitted any mention of Jews. He said on X: 

Today we remember the millions of lives lost during the Holocaust, the millions of stories of individual bravery and heroism, and one of the enduring lessons of one of the darkest chapters in human history: that while humans create beautiful things and are full of compassion, we’re also capable of unspeakable brutality. And we promise never again to go down the darkest path.

His statement is just one example of how many less-than-friendly actors have distorted the meaning of the Holocaust. Here’s my taxonomy of ways its memory has been distorted:

• Holocaust minimization: “The Holocaust happened, but the Jews have exaggerated the numbers.”
• Holocaust trivialization: “The Holocaust happened, and Jews have used it to play the victim card.”
• Holocaust inversion: “The Holocaust happened, but the genocide [sic] in Gaza is worse.”
• Holocaust universalization, part 1: “The Holocaust happened, but it was not just about the Jews.” (This is where the Vance statement falls.)
• Holocaust universalization, part 2: “The Holocaust happened, but other groups have had huge losses as well.”
• Holocaust denial: “The Holocaust did not happen.”
• And the paradoxical: “The Holocaust did not happen, but I wish that it would happen again.” 

Drilling down on the universalization/Vance version, he is still far from alone in making this type of remark. In fact, I have encountered many Jews who rush to universalize the Holocaust. It is as if our own extended family’s pain — the murder of 6 million Jews — was not bad enough for us to endure, as if we are afraid to name our own particular pain. Some have even accused me and other Jews of playing the game of comparative victimization. 

Is there any justification for the universalization of the Holocaust?

In one sense, yes. When it came to the concentration camps, Jews shared those wretched, subhuman quarters with Jehovah’s Witnesses, gay men, labor leaders, people with disabilities, political dissidents, Slavs, Poles and others. 

But that limits the Holocaust only to the concentration camps. For the Jews, the horror began with the Holocaust by bullets, or mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen. That’s because the Nazi obsession was to hunt down every Jew — man, woman and child — everywhere. Nowhere in Europe did Jews find safety simply by staying put. No other group faced that total, relentless, continent-wide pursuit. It was about destroying the entire Jewish people and the Jewish religion. How else does one account for the savage glee with which Nazis desecrated Torah scrolls and other sacred objects?

Knowing that, how should we think about those other groups who suffered?

In Dante’s “Inferno,” he described many circles of hell. In Hitler’s inferno, the Jews were in the innermost circle. But there were outer circles, and you cannot tell the story of World War II without including them.

When you walk into the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of the first things that you will see is an exhibit on the killings of people with physical and mental disabilities. The Nazis labeled them “life unworthy of life.” The Nazis perfected the grim science of execution by carbon monoxide on them. An estimated 250,000 people with disabilities were killed, according to the museum. 

Why did those killings stop? Because the churches protested. There were no such protests for the Jews.

The Nazis crushed Poland’s leadership class; they murdered teachers, clergy, lawyers and intellectuals to break the nation’s spine. They jailed and killed labor organizers and political opponents and imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses — killing about 1,500 — who refused to swear loyalty.

The Nazi regime persecuted gay men as enemies of the racial state. Many wound up in concentration camps, with pink triangles on their uniforms. Thousands died from abuse, exhaustion, disease and execution.

The Nazis deported Roma, or Europeans whose ancestry can be traced to modern-day India and Pakistan, performed medical experiments on their children and murdered entire settlements. Roma survivors use the word Porajmos, or “the devouring,” to name their catastrophe. Across Europe today, Roma communities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment and health care. Politicians still win votes by stoking fear of Roma neighbors. Hate crimes still occur.

We can say this clearly and honestly: Many groups suffered under Nazism. But only one group was condemned to total, global eradication — the Jews.

To quote my friend Peter Himmelman in his Substack:

Hitler (may his name be erased) himself was explicit about what the war was for. In his speech to the Reichstag on January 30, 1939, he declared that if war came, its result would be “the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” This was not metaphor. It was demonic prophecy, a warped but deeply held theology, the articulation of a destiny he believed necessary to redeem the world.

And while Jews were the main and central victims of the destruction, and as others were also victims, the Holocaust is a dark story with universal lessons and implications.

Consider the Exodus from Egypt — the central event of Jewish historical memory, which contains specific ethical lessons for the Jewish people. As philosopher Michael Walzer wrote in “Exodus and Revolution,” the Exodus story has featured prominently for many liberation leaders, movements and revolutions — for example, Oliver Cromwell, Leninism, liberation theology, the German peasants’ revolt, John Calvin, John Knox, both Boer and Black nationalists in South Africa and, of course, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Each of them drew inspiration from a Jewish story. 

So, too, does the Holocaust have larger lessons, and it is up to Jews to name them. Those lessons include that human life has dignity, meaningfulness and worth; that all nations must safeguard the human rights of their citizens; that when people use science and technology unethically, it can lead to great evil; that highly educated professionals are capable of great evil; that anything that can be denied will be denied; and that societies require early warning systems when democratic ideals are in peril. 

People wonder aloud: Is America in 2026 just like Germany in 1936?

No. Why? 

In Berlin, as part of the Rosenstrasse Women’s Memorial for the Holocaust, a sculpture shows a man sitting on a park bench, blithely looking away, representing “the indifference of those who, passively, have expressed their indignation or approval.” In 2026, Americans are choosing not to be the Germans of 1936. We are not looking away.

(RNS) — A federal judge ordered far-right influencer Laura Loomer to resume her monthly $1,200 payments to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which Loomer was originally ordered to pay in a settlement reached after her failed lawsuit against the Muslim advocacy group.

After multiple appeals, the ruling affirms Loomer’s requirement to pay CAIR and its Florida chapter the remaining balance of a nearly $125,000 settlement from a lawsuit the influencer brought against the organization in August 2019, alleging that CAIR Florida had conspired with the social media company then known as Twitter to ban her from that platform.

Loomer had stopped the payments in December 2025 after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued an executive order designating CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egypt-based Islamist organization, as foreign terrorist organizations. The governor had written that providing contract, employment or funds to these organizations would be considered “material support.”

On Thursday (Jan. 29), the court denied Loomer’s request to cease payments based on DeSantis’ executive order. Judge Bruce E. Reinhart of the Southern District of Florida, who affirmed previous court rulings on Thursday, said Loomer didn’t prove the order would be enforced nor that she would suffer “irreparable injury” if she resumed her payments.

“Plaintiff is required to make approximately three more settlement payments,” wrote Reinhart.”It is not in the public interest to continue expending judicial resources on this case.”

CAIR hailed the ruling, saying in a statement that the group used the settlement money for its legal actions. “We look forward to receiving Ms. Loomer’s final payments and using the funds to once again protect American Muslims and our neighbors from hate,” wrote CAIR litigation director Lena Masri.

Loomered, a media platform founded by the influencer, didn’t immediately respond to Religion News Service’s request for comment.

A self-described investigative journalist, Loomer boasts 1.8 million followers on X and is known for posting offensive statements targeting Muslim Americans, Black Americans and immigrant communities on her platforms.

During the 2024 presidential election, for instance, Loomer tweeted, “the White House will smell like curry & White House speeches will be facilitated via a call center” if then-Vice President Kamala Harris won the election. In 2022, she labeled herself a “white advocate” while addressing attendees at the American Renaissance conference.

RELATED: Sen. Cotton urges IRS to review CAIR’s nonprofit status, alleges ties with terror groups

The ruling is the latest development in the suit filed by the unofficial adviser to President Donald Trump after Twitter shut down her account in November 2018 for a tweet violating its rules against hateful conduct. In her suit, she argued that members of CAIR, its Florida chapter and Twitter had a special relationship and that CAIR played a “role in deciding what ideas and voices Twitter will silence.”

Twitter maintained that her account was canceled for a tweet accusing U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota of being “anti-Jewish” and claiming that her faith oppressed gays, abused women and forced them to wear hijabs, the head covering worn by some Muslim women. Omar, the first Somali American to serve in Congress, is Muslim.

At the time, Loomer had asked Trump to help her reverse Twitter’s ban. “If you want to win in 2020 you have to ensure your supporters have a voice on social media,” she wrote to the president on Gab, a far-right social platform. (Loomer’s X account was later reinstated after Elon Musk bought the platform in October 2022.)

The lawsuit was dismissed in November 2019 by another U.S. district judge in Florida, a decision upheld in December 2020 in another proceeding, noting that Twitter couldn’t be liable for banning Loomer’s account and that CAIR didn’t interfere in Loomer and Twitter’s “business relationship” because it found no evidence that the two shared one. 

In a settlement that followed, Loomer and her company, Illoominate Media Inc., were ordered to pay $123,761.65 to CAIR and its Florida chapter and $661.72 in court-related costs. 

The settlement was affirmed in February and September 2022. In 2023, the amount was reduced to $73,500, considering the personal debt the influencer was carrying. She was to make a $12,000 initial payment and pay the remaining amount in $1,200 installments. According to Thursday’s ruling, Loomer still owes CAIR approximately $3,900.

RELATED: Sen. Cotton urges IRS to review CAIR’s nonprofit status, alleges ties with terror groups

(RNS) — The closest analogue in American history to the current protests against the Department of Homeland Security’s mass deportation tactics is what happened after passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850. Back then, it was not undocumented immigrants that the government was taking into custody to the dismay of protesters, but those fleeing bondage in the South.

The act, part of a compromise package of measures intended to keep the United States intact, suspended habeas corpus (meaning the government didn’t have to justify imprisoning individuals); denied a jury trial to “runaways”; provided higher fees to officials finding in favor of enslavers; and ordered all citizens, at risk of fine and even imprisonment, to assist in catching fugitives.

The act provoked resistance across the North, not only from citizens Black and white, but also from state legislatures. Vermont’s led the way with a law requiring its judicial and law enforcement officials to assist captured slaves. Northern juries refused to convict people charged with violating the law. The Underground Railroad went into high gear.

Among the evangelical Protestants who dominated the country’s religious life, opinions were divided. On one side were the abolitionists who believed that civil disobedience in this instance was justified by God’s “higher law.” At the extreme opposite end were proslavery radicals — secessionists for whom, as historian Richard Carwardine points out, “northerners’ appeals to the higher law demonstrated the appalling advance of rotten theology and ‘moral and political heresies’ in the free states.”

Regardless of their views on slavery, however, most evangelical leaders, North and South, preached support for the act in order to preserve the Union. As the Rev. Ichabod Spencer, a Presbyterian minister in Brooklyn, New York, put it in a widely circulated sermon denouncing his abolitionist peers, “If we shall have the rebellion, disunion, and civil war, to which these evil principles and these excitements tend, the guilt of such clergymen will not be small!”

It is striking how differently religious opinion is arrayed today. Amid the ongoing protests in Minnesota, support for the administration’s approach has largely come from radicals on the right. Self-described Christian nationalist pastor Doug Wilson has praised federal agents for dealing a body blow to the left. MAGA influencers Eric Metaxas and Jack Posobiec, meanwhile, denounce the Minneapolis protests as a “communist insurgency.”

More mainstream religious conservatives, by contrast, have mostly confined themselves to assailing the anti-ICE radicals who disrupted that Sunday service at Cities Church, in St. Paul. About the behavior of the federal agents — even regarding the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — they’ve had little or nothing to say.

Case in point: Catholic Bishop Robert Barron of the Minnesota Diocese of Winona-Rochester, a national media personality who regularly supports the Trump administration, repeatedly criticized the church disruption but to date has said nary a word about Pretti, a fellow Catholic.

By contrast, the weight of centrist religious opinion has been against Trump immigration policy and in support of the many clergy who have joined the protests on the ground. This ranges from the call by the National Association of Evangelicals to “stand with our immigrant neighbors” to a request from 300 Catholic leaders asking the U.S. Senate to defund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless it is reformed, to a joint statement from all non-Orthodox streams of Judaism condemning violent immigration enforcement. (Jewish Orthodoxy stands with conservative evangelicalism in saying nothing.)

Why is religious opinion more critical of federal immigration enforcement today than it was of the Fugitive Slave Act 176 years ago? Any answer should start with a couple of observations.

First, the overwhelmingly peaceful protests have been exercised within the ambit of the First Amendment. And second, the enforcement, lacking specific congressional authorization, has repeatedly violated rights of due process.

In other words, there’s been no need for the protesters to invoke a higher law. That old-time secular law’s been on their side.

I’ve seen lots of great scenes in movies, but rarely one that has held me like that scene at the prison yard.

The post When Something Moves You and You Can’t Move On appeared first on Jewish Journal.

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Judges at the Vatican’s highest appeals court reviewing the convictions of six defendants, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu, in a landmark Vatican financial trial are now being asked to weigh the legal consequences of actions taken by Pope Francis during the investigation.

The late pontiff’s role in the investigation has been repeatedly called into question during what has been called “the Vatican trial of the century,” which started in 2021 and revolves around a London real estate investment.

In 2019, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State became embroiled in the controversial purchase of a former Harrods warehouse in London that cost the religious institution $400 million. The nine individuals involved in the purchase — financiers, Vatican officers and Becciu (who was the Vatican Substitute at the time, the third-highest-ranking official at the Vatican) — were charged in connection with the deal. In 2023, they were found guilty on various counts, including fraud, embezzlement and money laundering.

Becciu was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to five years and six months in prison, barred from public office and ordered to pay an $8,000 fine.

During the investigations, Pope Francis issued several decrees, known as rescripta ex audientia, which empowered the Vatican prosecutors and gendarmes to carry out arrests and to seize critical evidence. According to the defendants, those papal decrees undermined the rule of law in the Vatican City state because they were tailored to the individuals involved in the London investment.

At the fifth appeal hearing before the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura on Tuesday (Feb. 3), Mario Zanchetti, the lawyer of Gianluigi Torzi, who was hired by the Vatican Secretariat of State as a middleman in the London property purchase, sharply criticized the Byzantine legal means used to obtain the convictions.

Zanchetti said the prosecutor’s methods “transformed the Vatican legal code into a fascist system,” which undermined the validity of the entire trial. “I am not accusing Pope Francis,” he said, adding that the pontiff had likely not been well informed. Zanchetti argued, however, that even in countries such as Russia and Iran, laws must be made public and that this requirement was not met in the case of the rescripta, rendering his client’s arrest unlawful.

The head of the three-judge panel of the Vatican appellate court, Archbishop Alejandro Arellano Cedillo, who is also the dean of the Vatican’s judicial tribunal known as the Roman Rota, intervened to ask that the late pope not be dragged into the proceedings.

If the papal decrees were to be considered administrative acts, Zanchetti suggested “a way out” for the Vatican judges, who might be hesitant to call Francis’ actions into question. The judges could assess how the decrees were interpreted and applied, without ruling on their validity. Under that approach, he said, the court could determine that prosecutors exceeded the scope of the rescripta, invalidating their use.

Zanchetti argued that Pope Leo XIV, who is also a canon lawyer, could allow the judges to determine whether Francis’ decrees were legally “ineffective,” which would nullify all evidence seized by Vatican gendarmes and severely undermine the prosecution’s case.

The Vatican chief prosecutor, Alessandro Diddi, already had to abstain from participating in the appeal after his conduct in the original trial was called into question and he was accused of witness tampering. In mid-January, the Signatura rejected the appeal of the Vatican prosecutor that sought harsher sentences. The defendants are now asking that their sentences be either overturned or reduced.

Other defense lawyers echoed concerns over what they consider a lack of rule of law in the Vatican. The lawyer of Enrico Crasso, who was the financial adviser for the Vatican secretary of state for almost three decades and was sentenced to seven years in prison after being found guilty of embezzlement and fraud, described the rescriptum as a “ridiculous discretionary power” that was handed to Vatican prosecutors.

“There have never been in 2,000 years of the church’s history secret rescriptum,” he said.

Defense lawyers also lamented that the full video of the testimony by Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, ex-bursar at the Secretariat of State who became a key witness in the proceedings, was never shared with the defense. They reiterated long-standing objections that evidence collected during the investigation was not fully disclosed.

The defense also raised the issue of the alleged cooperation between Vatican gendarmes and the Italian intelligence services to investigate the lives of the accused, well before the start of the formal investigation.

Massimo Bassi, the defense lawyer of the Vatican employee Fabrizio Tirabassi, quoted a speech by Pope Leo to secret service agents in December when he underlined the importance of safeguarding the rights of individuals and of due process.

“The activities of the security services must be regulated by laws that are duly enacted and published, subject to oversight and supervision by the judiciary, and with budgets that are monitored through public and transparent controls,” Leo said.

The trial is set to continue this week, with defense arguments scheduled before judges begin deliberations.