(The Federalist) This is an adapted excerpt from Israel and Civilization: The Fate of the Jewish Nation and the Destiny of the West by Josh Hammer. Used with permission from Radius Book Group, a division of Diversion Publishing.
In June 2024, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a law making his state the first to mandate display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms from kindergarten through university. As Landry, himself a Catholic, said before signing the bill, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you gotta start from the original law given, which was Moses…. He got his commandments from God.”
Unfortunately, the governor’s lavish praise of Moses — whom religious Jews consider “the father of all the prophets that were before him and that arose after him,” per Maimonides’s well-known Thirteen Principles of Faith — was not appreciated by secular Jewish families in Louisiana, three of whom immediately filed suit in federal court. The families cited concern that their children might feel suppressed in expressing their “own Jewish background and beliefs.” (Read More)
