ATLANTA—Rabbi Mark Zimmerman is the twelfth in a line of rabbis that dates back centuries. He has led a suburban Atlanta synagogue for 21 years. He considers himself well-versed in the intricacies of Judaism's dietary laws.

Still, due to a Georgia law that kosher food meet "Orthodox Hebrew religious rules," the rabbi from the Conservative Jewish movement does not have the authority to certify kosher restaurants.

See http://www.mercurynews.com/religion/ci_13157666 for full story and

http://www.kosheratlanta.org

http://www.aclu.org

My comments on this: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here.

It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us - that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion - that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Little did President Lincoln realize what the future would bring in relationship to religious freedom in the 20th and 21st century in The United States of America. Previously, George Washinton, in his letter to the Jews of Rhode Island, he wrote:

“To Bigotry No Sanction,
to Persecution No Assistance”

George Washington's Letter to the
Jews of Newport, Rhode Island

(1790)



On August 17, 1790, Moses Seixas, the warden of Congregation Kahal Kadosh Yeshuat Israel, better known as the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, Rhode Island, penned an epistle to George Washington, welcoming the newly elected first president of the United States on his visit to that city. Newport had suffered greatly during the Revolutionary War. Invaded and occupied by the British and blockaded by the American navy, hundreds of residents fled, and many of those who remained were Tories. After the British defeat, the Tories fled in turn. Newport’s nineteenth-century economy never recovered from these interruptions and dislocations.

See: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/bigotry.html for the full letter.

We, in this United States of America, should say to the legislators in Georgia and elswhere that we intend to follow the intent of and ideals of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and our United States Constitution and our Bill of Rights and our God to never allow the STATE whether federal or state to interfere with our religious practices, especially those that pertain to our Kashrut laws.

Rise up and write to the State of Georgia in opposition to their interference in our religion.