The Simon Wiesenthal Center said the idea that Jews needed to be baptized was offensive. The parents of the center's namesake, famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, have previously been baptized by Mormons.

"We were sure that these baptisms were removed but we're seeing that they're not," Rabbi Marvin Hier, the center's founder and dean said in a statement emailed to JTA. "We reiterated yet again the reasons we protested that it's insulting that the People of the Book whom G-d made a Covenant would need the assistance of a group of Mormons to gain entrance to Heaven."