| --- |
| title: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12) (HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017388)" |
| source: "House Oversight: Estate Documents (Nov 12)" |
| sourceUrl: "https://www.justice.gov/epstein" |
| date: "2026-01-01" |
| category: "House Oversight" |
| eftaNumber: "HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017388" |
| ocrPages: 1 |
| ocrChars: 3548 |
| ocrElapsed: 0.0 |
| parseTier: "external-legacy" |
| engine: "engine undisclosed (ep-nov-12.greg.technology mirror)" |
| externalSource: "greg-ep-nov-12" |
| externalLicense: "not granted" |
| externalCredit: "ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| externalUrl: "https://ep-nov-12.greg.technology" |
| --- |
| |
| 4.2.12 |
| WC: 191694 |
| I also knew that our Constitution said some things about religion. In our Yeshiva we learned |
| mostly about the First Amendment's protection of freedom of religion. But I started to read a |
| little more about the Constitution and quickly learned that there were three references to religion |
| in that great document of liberty. The first, in the body of the original Constitution, declared that |
| "no religious test shall ever be required" for holding office under the United States. Wow, is this |
| really true? I wondered, then why hasn't there been a Jewish president? And why is there only |
| one "Jewish seat" on the Supreme Court? It sure sounded to me like religious tests were being |
| applied in fact, although it was unconstitutional to do so. This got me to thinking about the |
| difference between the law as written and practiced. |
| I also discovered that the First Amendment, in addition to guaranteeing freedom of religion, had |
| an awkwardly phrased guarantee which I did not understand: "Congress shall make no law |
| respecting an establishment of religion." There were two words I didn't understand. What does |
| "respecting" mean? I had always used it to suggest a positive attitude respect —toward others. |
| Clearly it had a different meaning in the First Amendment, something like "regarding." Second, |
| what did the word "establishment" mean? I simply had no idea and so I began to do some |
| research. The answer was anything but simple and the meaning of the term is still not completely |
| clear to me after 60 years of thinking, writing and teaching about it. |
| So there was some upside for me in the words "under God" being added to our pledge. It not |
| only got me thinking, it got me arguing with my friends and even with some of my teachers. It's |
| an ongoing argument... |
| The downside, which was evident to me even back then, was that whatever the words prohibiting |
| an establishment of religion meant, they seemed incomparable with compelling every school boy |
| to declare his belief in a God inserted into the pledge by Congress. So, although I believed in |
| God (or more likely never thought about any alternative), I decided never to say the words. I |
| continued to recite the old pledge, confident that it was I, and not those who amended the pledge, |
| who were being patriotic and faithful to the meaning of our Constitution. I guess I was an early |
| Originalist in that regard, since my reading suggested to me that Jefferson and Madison would not |
| Flashing forward a generation, my oldest son Elon, had a similar epiphany in 1970, when my |
| family moved to California for a year so that I could take up residency in The Center For |
| Advanced Study of Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. We enrolled our kids in a Palo Alto Public |
| School and my 8 year old son Elon got into trouble for refusing to recite the words "under God" |
| in the pledge. When he came home from school, I asked him how come he had just noticed the |
| words under God, since his elementary school in Cambridge also required periodic recitations of |
| the pledge. He told me that we were at war in Vietnam and he thought the words— pronounced |
| with a Boston accent-were "under guard." It was only a California teacher writing the words on |
| the blackboard that revealed to him that he was being required to take a pledge that included |
| God. By this time I knew that the Supreme Court had ruled that a religious objector could not be |
| required to recite the pledge, because, as the justices put it: |
| ∞ Nor would the composer of the original pledge who was an early socialist. |
| 301 |
| HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_017388 |
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