Accept on Jewish line

Katherine Mary King Tamir

I was concerned that when I pressed Accept it gave me permission to do a non-related person. I thought Accept meant that I had read and accepted the information. But when I pressed ACCEPT it reserved the name for me! I was showing my Jewish friend that you had to be related to do work for someone but it let me and I'm not related. I feel very concerned because i thought Accept meant that I had read and understood the policy.

Also, is there a way for my Jewish friend to take her family off the tree?

Sam Sulser

Hi Katherine. I can understand your confusion. When you click accept, It does mean that you have read and understand the policies but then as you found, it also completes the reservation. FamilySearch provides the policy and then it is a expected that people reserving ordinances will be honest as they click Accept. There are a number of things in place to help us monitor poor behavior and action can be taken if it is found that someone is not following the policies. Our leaders continue to emphasize the importance of working on our own families.

There is not a way to delete people from the tree. One thing to remember is that her family is also the family of many other people. There will likely be people she is related to that are added or edited by others who are also related. I hope this helps!

Gordon Collett

This is the statement that we are presented with every time we start to reserve an ordinance.

Clicking Accept means that you are certifying that you have checked and you are a relative and you are authorized by church policy as written here to reserve the ordinances.

We are expected to take the counsel seriously, govern ourselves, and if we are not a relative to cancel the reservation.

Paul W

@Sam Sulser

Perhaps you, or another moderator, could move this item to the more appropriate "Temple" section.

dontiknowyou

I am glad to see this discussion here in the Tree category. It helps to explain the "stick to your own direct ancestors" attitude by some persons here: they are confused. LDS policy re LDS temple work does not apply to FamilySearch Tree.

Paul W

@dontiknowyou

Initially, I thought the originator was talking about Family Tree in general, then saw the subject matter relates to ordinances - hence my suggestion. Nevertheless, I agree with you about not having to confine our Family Tree inputs to our own family branches.

dontiknowyou

@Paul W exactly! That's why it is so important to be clear about the difference between the public tree and the private church-internal system.

ElizabethScholes1

I am having a similar problem. I am genetically 26% Jewish, and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My family has been very careful about putting our Jewish relatives on the tree because our Jewish relatives are not pleased we are doing the work and they are really upset if a non-related individual does the temple work. This is true even when working on individuals who are 6 or 7 generations back. So imagine our concern when we discover someone submitting the work on them. Currenly, the only way I can see of keeping everyone happy is to not have our Jewish relatives on the tree. I wish there was a way of at least letting people know when a line is Jewish, so that this doesn't cause issues for those of us this kind of family problem.

Paul W

@ElizabethScholes1

Currently, the only way I can see of keeping everyone happy is to not have our Jewish relatives on the tree.

Why make an exception for those who are Jewish? Individuals of all faiths (except LDS, of course) and none can be caused upset by the fact their relatives' / ancestors' names are being used for ordinance purposes.

In order that my own cousins do not get upset by my adding their (deceased) parents to Family Tree I avoid doing so, but I accept that will not stop other users (possibly totally unrelated) from doing so - as indeed I have found to be the case.

I understand holocaust victims are treated as an exception, but otherwise can't see any reason that Jewish families should be treated any differently than others.

Obviously, this is a matter for Church leaders / FamilySearch management to deal with, but I stand by my comments in not feeling religion / heritage should be a factor here, as other organisations (e.g. the Roman Catholic Church) probably have similar feelings concerning this issue.

dontiknowyou

I think it helps to be clear that there are two issues:

1. Being in the tree.
2. Having Temple work done.