Jewish Plaintiffs in Establishment Clause Cases

I was doing some research on Establishment Clause cases, and noticed the plaintiffs in several leading cases were Jewish. I'm sure I'm missing others.

In Braunfeld v. Brown (1961), Abraham Braunfeld and the other plaintiffs were "member[s] of the Orthodox Jewish faith, which requires the closing of their places of business and a total abstention from all manner of work from nightfall each Friday until nightfall each Saturday."

In Engel v. Vitale (1962), Steven Engel was described as a "devout Reform Jew."

In Flast v. Cohen (1968), the lead plaintiff was Florence Flast. Several sources indicated he was Jewish, but nothing definitive. The other plaintiffs were Albert Shanker, Helen D. Henkin, Frank Abrams, C. Irving Dwork, Florine Levin. I would surmise that at least some of these plaintiffs were Jewish as well. Cohen, the Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, was Jewish.

In Lee v. Weisman (1992), student Deborah Weisman was Jewish, and objected to a graduation message delivered by Rabbi Leslie Gutterman, of Temple Beth El in Providence.

In Elk Grove Unified School District v. Newdow (2004), Michael Newdow's mother was "Jewish but secular."

In Town of Greece v. Galloway (2014), Susan Galloway was Jewish.

In Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971), Alton Lemon, the lead plaintiff was not Jewish, but the respondent, David Kurtzman, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, was Jewish.

Update: I found a detailed article that provides a somewhat critical analysis of Jews and the Establishment Clause. Here is a snippet:

Pfeffer and the leading Jewish organizations were gratified by the decisions in McCollum, Torcaso, Engel, and Schempp. These decisions did much more than change the law. They theoretically redefined, in educational institutions throughout America, the place of Christian values and traditions in American culture. Gregg Ivers describes the Engel and Schempp decisions "as the moral equivalent of a dagger through the heart of the traditional Christian values so long embodied in the American civic and religious cultural milieu."268 The alienation and discomfort that Jews had felt on American soil since 1654 were now officially redeemed. The time had come for the nation to journey on a new, secular expressway.

Not all Jews greeted these Court decisions with a spirit of triumph. One Jewish resident of Los Angeles sent Pfeffer the following message: "I feel that because of you and your ilk, in all the civilized nations of the world the most despised, spat upon, hated and shunned person is the Jew."269 Another warned him: "You are getting we [sic] the Jews in a terrible mess, keep it up and we shall all again be persecuted."270 A Christian responded in a similar fashion: "Your motives seem small, petty and personal."271

L. Scott Smith, The Secularization of America's Public Culture: Jews and the Establishment Clause, 32 U. La Verne L. Rev. 257, 293 (2011)

Comments

[SRG2]

That's almost as shocking as finding out that an economics Nobelist turns out to be Jewish.

[Goju]

Oy Veh

[DDHarriman]

Someone is trolling me surely

[Bubba Jones]

Blackman shocked to discover that Jews might be targets of religious discrimination.

[Incunabulum]

Its not shocking that they're targets.

Its shocking *how often* they're targets compared to anyone else.

[SRG2]

Less shocking when you know that in the US, Jews are more likely to be the victims of hate crimes than any other group defined by religion, ethnicity or sexuality.

[bernard11]

In fact, African-Americans are more than twice as likely as Jews to be victims of hate crimes.

We're second, but obviously first in the religion category.

[SRG2]

I think you'll find that while there are indeed more hate crimes committed against African-Americans than against Jews, because of the disparity in population, any one Jew is more likely to be the victim of a hate crime than an African-American.

[Roger S]

Jews were not targets in these cases.

[SRG2]

Unable to connect the dots? In a society where Jews are disproportionately victims of hate crimes it is not surprising that we are also on the receiving end of religious discrimination.

[Bob from Ohio]

"devout Reform Jew."

Does not eat pork on Shabbat.

[MollyGodiva]

"a devout Reform Jew" is a a self-contradiction. The whole point of being Reform is to not be devout.

[David Nieporent]

That is a cynical take, but it is not one the Reform movement would agree with. Though not to channel Bill Clinton, but it depends on what the meaning of "devout" is.

[MollyGodiva]

The entire concept of Reform is that they reject the notion of the Torah's commandments as binding. They also model themselves off churches more than shuls. They are the opposite of devote.

[Drewski]

Unsurprising for a vocal antisemite like yourself to throw shade on the devoutness of all Reform Jews. You just can't resist trying to get a dig in whenever Judaism comes up. And in the next thread you'll be spitting Hamas talking points for eight hours straight. Tell me, is your disdain for Reform Jews because of your principled antizionism? What's the basis? Why is it any of your fucking business?

[bernard11]

"a devout Reform Jew" is a a self-contradiction.

No it's not. Jews have widely varying degrees of observance.

Leviticus 19:19, from the Jewish Publication Society's 1917 translation.

Ye shall keep My statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind; thou shalt not sow thy field with two kinds of seed; neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together.

Do you obey these statutes? Do you think Jewish farmers or ranchers who don't obey them can't be devout?

[MollyGodiva]

"Do you think Jewish farmers or ranchers who don't obey them can't be devout?"
Intentionally violating the commandments is the opposite of devote.

[Milhouse]

Devout Jews do indeed obey these laws, and someone who doesn't can't be a devout Jew.

But Reform Judaism is a separate religion with its own rules, and it is certainly possible to be a devout Reform Jew while disobeying this verse, since Reform doesn't recognize it as binding. The key point here is that Reform is not just "Judaism lite". It has its own standards, by which devotion to it must be measured.

[SRG2]

Reform Judaism is not a separate religion. It is a toned-down version of Orthodox or traditional Judaism.

[MollyGodiva]

Reform Judaism is kinda really a separate religion than Judaism. Their basic tenets are different.

[Purple Martin]

The way my culturally Jewish, secular son in law described it to me as Judaism reaching an accommodation within whose four major branches...

• Reform (home of the so-called Secular Jew),
• Conservative (actually, Liberal),
• Orthodox (Conservative), and
• Ultra Orthodox (Fundamentalist)

...nearly all Jews can find a home.

His Russian college mathematics professor father was the primary cantor of the small Conservative synagogue in their isolated western-state town sustained by a large land-grant university. His Norwegian college geology professor mother was, like me, raised casually Lutheran but already non-religious before leaving home.

Son-in-Law, culturally but not matrilineally (and therefore not officially) Jewish, and Purple Daughter, never religious, maintain an interesting mix of chosen traditions in their home. The high-school granddaughters don't find anything unusual or even particularly interesting about all that, at all.

[roger]

Imagine my surprise that Josh likes to make lists of Jews.

[David Nieporent]

Hey, we should count our blessings that this time he didn't try to decide which of them counted as actual Jews.

[Darwinnie]

+1

[Darwinnie]

Also, to be fair to Josh, plenty of Christians like to accuse others of not being Christians too. In my experience this is usually evangelical-types (southern baptists, mega-church types, etc) accusing Catholics, Episcopalians, and Mormons. I’m pretty sure certain Muslim sects do the same to other Muslim sects, and so on and so on.

[SRG2]

Hence this ATG Emo Phillips joke:

"Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"

He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"

Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over."

[John F. Carr]

I recall some cases about mosques that didn't reach the Supreme Court.

[Purple Martin]

Prof. Blackman, did you know one of your rivals came across a couple of your pages of late-night scribbled notes, and posted it to your blog? You might want to change your passwords.

[ReaderY]

Newdow was Jewish in the same way that anyone from England is an Anglican. Ethnicities and cultures have no Establishment Clause significance.

[CJColucci]

Is there a point here?

[JoeFromtheBronx]

I thought it was just a fairly (especially for him) benign trivia-sort of entry, but then he tossed in that update. Not sure what that proves or if there is some message involved there in choosing that specific excerpt.