Wednesday, April 1, 1998 | 10:21 a.m.
Well, folks, I quickly got out my copy of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and nowhere could I find the part that said this nation was Christian. In fact, right up there near the top of the Bill of Rights, it says pretty strongly that "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. ..."
Then I grabbed my copy of the Bible, the one I received on my bar mitzvah, and searched and searched. Guess what? We Jewish folks can't go around lying, stealing, coveting our neighbor's wife and stuff, and a few more making up about 10 real serious things we better not do.
Then I searched back into my 40 years of teaching and nowhere in the Education Code does it say that prayers in school are to be Christian. Lately, they don't even let us have generic prayers, because some of the kids have an even different religion that says they can only pray to their own God. Some can't even salute the flag of the country that gives them that right. They're good kids, though, so I guess that's OK.
Bernard Cohen
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