Like the average Joe unfamiliar with the law, I thought that the cardinal qualities of a judge in the search for justice would be
reason, equity and impartiality. Wrong! In family courts, creativity comes first. Everyday family courts judges unleashed treasures of imagination to protect the best interests of the child.
Check that one: in Illinois, Judge Edward Jordan single handedly invented a new type of restraining order at the request of a mother: barring a divorced father – Joseph Reyes- to expose his baby girl to any other religion but judaism. I guess the model that Judge Jordan was trying to emulate was Afghanistan, where there is a general restraining order on exposing children to any other religion but Islam. Joseph Reyes, a catholic, took her daughter to church. He wants his daughter to be exposed to his faith and that of his ex-wife. He might face prison charges for violating a court order.
One can only wish that Illinois voters will be wise enough not to reelect this pioneer of the dialogue between religions, and help him refresh his knowledge on human rights.
Joseph’s wife is Rebecca Reyes (Shapiro), and her father is Howard Shapiro, who is an Executive Vice President and General Counsel for Playboy. That’s right, the man who doesn’t want his granddaughter exposed to Christianity, makes his money from pornography!! (Does the word hypocrite come to mind?)
He deserves to go to jail, for stupidity if nothing else.
The child’s mother is Jewish, which means that the child is Jewish. Period. There is just no debating that. Now, the marriage is falling apart, probably because he is such a shallow nobody, and suddenly he wants to proselytize the child to Catholicism. Good thing I’m not that kid’s mother, becuase they’d have found Reyes in a ditch if I were.
What this idiot did was marry a Jewish woman and convert to her religion. That should have ended the conversation, but he obviously was serious about neither the marriage nor the conversion. This is exactly why Jews aren’t exactly crazy about gentiles wanting to convert in the first place.
As for the restraining order, it makes perfect sense in that it prevents the father from using the child as a pawn in his conflict with the mother. It also prevents him from using his Roman religion as a weapon against the child. This business is not about his rights. It is about the rights of the child. The child, as the daughter of a Jewish woman, has the right to be raised as a member of her own people without being deliberately set upon, proselytized and religiously confused by her own father. He married the woman, he converted, the child is Jewish, and he can just suck that up and accept it.
Thanks for your comment.
I could not disagree more. I do not see why a kid could not be exposed to the faith of his father ( I would say the same thing if the father was jewish and the mother catholic) without the later being accused of proselytism. And I hope that the father is not contesting the fact that his kid is exposed to judaism.
It is not the job of the judge to decide which religion is appropriate to the kid.
I am sorry Ray, but in what country do you live -or where exactly were you brought up- that you think people should be thrown into jail for taking a child to a church -regardless its denomination?
I am guessing not the U.S. but I might be completely wrong