Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) proudly announced that its Executive Vice President, Rabbi Yaakov Menken, was appointed today to the Advisory Board of Religious Leaders to the U.S. Religious Liberty Commission. The Religious Liberty Commission was created by President Donald Trump in an Executive Order issued on May 1, with Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick as chair and Dr. Ben Carson as vice chair. Today the President named individuals to three Advisory Boards of Religious Leaders, Legal Experts, and Lay Leaders respectively.
In his Executive Order creating the Commission, the President noted that America’s Founding Fathers hoped to provide a place “in which religious people and institutions are free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or hostility from the Government.” But he also said that some of today’s Federal, State, and local policies have conflicted with that tradition, including those which “infringe upon longstanding conscience protections, prevent parents from sending their children to religious schools, threaten loss of funding or denial of non-profit tax status for faith-based entities, and single out religious groups and institutions for exclusion from governmental programs.” The Executive Order expects the Commission to report on the foundations and impact of religious liberty, but also to document current threats to domestic religious liberty and strategies to protect it for future generations.
Rabbi Menken made the following statement:
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I am sincerely honored to be named by President Trump to the Advisory Board of Religious Leaders to the Religious Liberty Commission. Coalition for Jewish Values has been a vocal advocate for religious freedom protections for Christian and other groups, understanding that any threat to their religious liberty could easily be used against our freedoms as well. Indeed, all of the items mentioned by the President in establishing the Commission are of great concern to the Jewish community, and I hope that the Commission will succeed in its mission of ensuring religious liberty for all.