Annals of Theodicy: Gays Caused Haiti Earthquake, Haredi Rabbi Says

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, the spokesman of the Rabbinical Alliance of America, also called on the Pentagon and Congress to stop the "sodomization" of our military and our society.

American rabbi: Homosexuality can cause earthquakes 
The Dscriber

Move over Pat Robertson and make room for Rabbi Yehuda Levin, the spokesman of the Rabbinical Alliance of America. This morning, the rabbi railed against the Obama administration's "ultra-liberal" plan to allow gays and lesbians to enlist in the military , calling the proposed policy the equivalent of "spiritual rape."…

Then Levin turned Robertsonesque, stating that the sins of men cause earthquakes, such as the one that caused massive devastation in Haiti. Only instead of arguing that the Haitians long ago made a pact with Satan, as Robertson did, Levin's twist is that homosexuality can be "a spiritual cause of earthquakes."

"Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti," Yehuda said in the media advisory issued via the Christian Newswire service.  "All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl. We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough."

Levin is Pat Buchanan's former Jewish liaison. Here's more of Levin's statement:

"When Americans are suffering economically and millions need jobs, it's shocking that the Administration is focused on its ultra-liberal militantly homosexualist agenda forcing the highlighting of homosexuals and homosexuality on an unwilling military. This is the equivalent of the spiritual rape of our military to satisfy the most extreme and selfish cadre of President Obama's kooky coalition."

Levin's Press Release.

The entire press release as a PDF file:

Download 1000 Rabbis Warn: Open Homosexuality in the Military is a Disaster and May Cause Further Natural Disasters - Christian Newswire

Comments

[danny]

A Gerrer Hassid had no business saying this sh*t. Clean up your own damn house.

[critical minyan]

i know this rabbi since we were kids. he is a giant putz.

[Althelion]

Oooh Rabbi Levin, all dressed in black, with a big, black beard - you are So butch.

[OTD for a reason]

I thought bloggers caused the earthquake.

[Alex]

Are they all reading from the same manual? Last week we heard the similar thing about Haiti. As I argued in the previous post, I am sure Levin can provide us with regression analysis and a necessary mathematical formula too.

It's almost like feel in the blank: The disasters were caused by______ .

[R]

They lose all credibility when they spew out rubbish.

[p_almonius]

Did the earth move for you, too, Rabbi Levin?

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

He's really concerned because there are so many hasidim in the military.

[A. Nuran]

Do mixed wool-linen suits cause forest fires?
Are oyster bars to blame for global warming?

[Clear]

"Levin, a Gerrer hasid, is Pat Buchanan's former Jewish liaison."

And he thinks Obama is the one with the "kooky coalition."

[yankele]

Please, please. let's put this into perspective. This is a guy who teas bags Pat Buchanan's balls. HE ran after Buchanan, Buchanan did not reach out to him. If we decided to rail against every publicity slut, well then we'd have to create a failed messiah for every denomination, sub-denomination and sub-sub-denomination of Judaism out there.

As for his being a Gerrer chosid??? that may be, but I lived in Chicago (where Levin claims to be from) and I am very close to the man who throws huge parties (tikkuns) on the Yahrzeits of the Chidushei Harim and Sfas Emet and I don't remember ever seeing him.

[Rob Wisler]

Where in the Talmud is this proclamation made (that homosexuality causes earthquakes?).

[Yerachmiel Lopin]

I say the war against toeyvah starts at home, in Ger.

[Jewish Cynic]

Rob, I think he's misinterpreting when a rabbi in the mikveh told him homosexual activity will "rock his world".

BTW was the asteroid impact 65 million years ago (oops, I mean not more than 5700 years ago) caused by gay dinosaurs?

[Bill]

Rob,

Nowhere for homosexuality in general.

Male homosexuality is identified as a cause of earhquakes in the Talmud Yerushalmi in Brachot 9:2

[Neandershort]

he is a giant putz.
Probably a small putz. That's what makes him so insecure.

They lose all credibility when they spew out rubbish.
They lost all credibility long ago when they spewed out their rubbish about Rabbi Slifkin and the concert. This is just icing on the evil-tasting cake.

This imbecile has a shul in my neighborhood and has been spewing his hate for some 30 years, while running for public office no less. And we wonder why our young are cynical about Jewish observance. I wish the earth would open up and swallow the schmuck.

When in the course of Jewish events. . . .

[Neandershort]

Oh by the way, homosexuals serve openly in the Israeli army (as they do in so many countries around the world) and it does't seem to negatively affect the army's effectiveness as a fighting force. If anything, "Don't ask don't tell," by forcing homosexual soldiers to continuously live a lie, is causing harm.

[chabib]

This sort of goes contrary to the 1980's
song " Rock You Like A Hurricane".
Why doesn't this chap condemn those in
his community who perform depraved acts
with children ?

[Rob Wisler]

OOPS, thanks Bill, I thought he was talking about Bavli(I didn't recall ever seeing this dictum in Bavli), I forgot about Yerushalmi.

[HaNavon]

it's interesting that this same rabbi would surely call a person wicked and evil if they claimed to have 'nevuah', prophecy. when it comes to lubavitch, i'm sure that he will scream and shout about lubitchers saying that the rebbe was a prophet or the messiah, but this little bit of information seems to have been communicated directly from the creator of the universe to only one man, rabbi levin of brooklyn.
something tells me that if the Diety were to give a communique to someone on this planet, it wouldn't be to someone who speaks poorly about jews in other communities like the 5 towns, which rabbi levin does regularly.
a word of advice, never trust a rabbi who goes around screaming about one particular issue, when you see that, know that this is almost always an overcompensation for his secret desires. this is the case with HaRav HaRapist Leib Tropper, who was shouting up and down about conversions and how they need to be done right, turns out that he just wanted to funnel the women into his bedroom.

[nat]

This man is nothing but a publicity hound, he talks about having the rabbis of yesteryear on his side thats bull sht, he has no backing hence his own shule…of course he has no job he is a fresser that seeks attention anywhere he can get it he is the worst of the worst, he is against everthing in the jewish community…..he is obsessed with anything sexual he is a pervert for sure maybe even worse…no one should report on this low life that only makes derogatory statement about our brothers/sisters except child molesters and the true evil doers…he is the worse type of human being…

[Witness]

Last week, Rabbi Levin, whom many of you discount, spoke to nd was loudly applauded by a right-to-life rally in Washington, DC, attended by more than 300,000 people. When, exactly if at all, did any of us bloggers herein ever address a rapt attentive crowd of 300,000? Rabbi Levin cites sources, chapter and verse, and is welcomed by the Christian born-again crowd. Funny, I'm willing to wager that every blogger here agrees fully with Rabbi Levin. In your guts, you fully know that all of his detratctors are nuts.

[Shmarya]

Levin is a shoteh.

[nat]

Witness, you joke for sure, so the Christian right yes 300,000 of them applauded him on his homosexual stand, so what?? otherwise an empty suite….why care about the gay issue as if there is nothing else its just nuts how obsessed he is..thats what happens when you have no job..he is just a critic of pleasure and goodness that the world offers…sick sick sick!!!!

[ZIY]

You gotta give Levin credit for one thing: being consistent with bashing gays for nearly 30 years, since his yeshivah days (Lakewood?).

As far as him being a Gerrer chosid, I don't think that is accurate. Maybe he close to Ger, or has Ger-esque sexual hangups, but I don't think he claims to be Ger, nor does his shul in Flatbush profess to be Ger.

He is a one-issue obssessor. All the calamities of the world, not only the Haiti earthquake, is because of one thing only: homosexuality.

[Milwaukee]

Witness, I know in my guts (and my heart and my brain, which are the consultative organs I prefer to use) that Levin is wrong on gays, wrong on abortion, and wrong on supporting Pat Buchanan the drunken leprechaun of the nativist right (this is a funny joke if you know the history of American nativism in regards to Irishmen).

Levin is wrong if he says these things in front of 300000, he's wrong if he says these things in front of 9, he's wrong if he says these things to himself in the mirror.

You can go with your beloved Rabbi Levin to play the court Jew for the Christanist Right, they're always on the lookout for new recruits.

[shneerhere]

Brandon: OMG, did the earth move for you, too?

Lance:oh yes, OH YES! Like an earthquake!

Nawwwww.... I don't think so....

[Chayim]

Rabbi Levin is on target. Great Rabbis from Avigdor Miller to the Kasha rebbe stated the same thing and warned against gay rights. Israel will be destroyed if they allow gays to march.

[Yakira]

It is exactly these types of religious fanatics that give atheists fuel for their fire! People like Yehuda Levin only help to further isolate religious beliefs from the secular world. The atheist organization would be more tolerant of religion if it wasn't for nutcases like Levin. Him making comments like this further lead to the total destruction of all religious beliefs.

[Chayim]

Gay marriage will destroy America. Next they will want brothers to marry sisters. And why not allow people to marry their pets. And why not men marry multiple wives,oh I forgat its politically incorrect.

[412]

And why not men marry multiple wives,

That's a good point. Why not marry multiple wives? It's halachically permissible.

[WoolSilkCotton]

The orthodox already marry their cousins. So why not their brothers and sisters?

[Hometown Postville]

Yakira-People like Yehuda Levin only help to further isolate religious beliefs from the secular world

What a profound statement! Levin's ideologies could be turned against him; could one also assume the actions of a few pedophilic rabbis are the cause of the earthquake instead?

[Maskil]

WSC: That's a sick thing to say. To take a relationship that you on your own basis have deemed wrong and then to equate it with incest. Shame on you.

[Jakes]

WSC: That's a sick thing to say. To take a relationship that you on your own basis have deemed wrong and then to equate it with incest. Shame on you.

Posted by: Maskil

Funny, few use that logic when it comes to same-sex relationships. In fact, using incest and bestiality are the preferred comparisons of the anti-gay rights groups. But the Orthodox? Never!

[Maskil]

The "moral" bases for prohibiting same-sex relationships and for prohibiting sex among adult consenting siblings are the same: The Bible (Torah, Mesorah, et al). If rejected, for whatever reason, it all goes – and we shouldn't see the US imprisoning a brother-sister consensually married couple with eight children (during the 90s) violating their civil rights to freedom and protections against unlawful imprisonment and breaking up a family consisting of eight minor who were separated from their parents and damned to the fate of life in the foster system, just as we should not see a man going to prison for having sex with a horse (South Carolina – also a guy got a four year sentence in CA for the same "crime" in the 90s).

As much as WSC may be disgusted by cousin marriages (from which WSC probably stems, like the rest of us), that does not justify equating it with incest.

[R]

I think gay couples are the least of our worries.
But don't blame a natural disaster on one group of people because of their sexuality. That is nonsense.
Maybe the earthquakes happen to pull humanity together so we can prove that we aren't all self obsessed and we do practice charity and will help out our fellow man.
With all the crap going on you would think humans are a race of selfish, cruel and evil bastards.

[devorah]

The goyim will really think we're nuts now. Glad he's not from Cleveland, Ohio.

[Hometown Postville]

"R"- I like your response! "Maybe the earthquakes happen to pull humanity together so we can prove that we aren't all self obsessed and we do practice charity and will help out our fellow man."

Just think how much money would be available to assist with natural disasters if he we didn't spend it deliberately blowing each other up!

[ad]

yakira. You're are so right, it does give atheists, and I am one and proud of it, fuel for our arguments. You don't need religion to recognize what is just and unjust, what is decent and what is not, what is fair and what is not. You only need some good, common sense, and a smattering of decency yourself. My atheism has come upon me slowly and is supported by the beauty and of science and its inexorable path into the future. While there is some value in religion, I'm afraid the need to suspend rationale thought to accept most of religious dogma is something I cannot do any longer and never will again.

[Chayim]

According to the Torah it is a worse sin for a man to have sex with another man than a man to have sex with his sister. A male homosexual is liable for the worst of the 4 death penalties,stoning while a brother having relations with his sister gets koras not any death penalty. We determine a crime by the punishment.The more sever the punishment the worse the crime is.

[buy generic viagra]

Earthquakes will occur anywhere within the earth where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy to drive fracture propagation along a fault plane. In the case of transform or convergent type plate boundaries, which form the largest fault surfaces on earth, they will move past each other smoothly and aseismically only if there are no irregularities or asperities along the boundary that increase the frictional resistance. Most boundaries do have such asperities and this leads to a form of stick-slip behaviour. Once the boundary has locked, continued relative motion between the plates leads to increasing stress and therefore, stored strain energy in the volume around the fault surface. This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the locked portion of the fault, releasing the stored energy.

[Gevezener Chusid]

Yehuda Levin: the gay proctologist's fantasy!

[Casual Shoes]

This continues until the stress has risen sufficiently to break through the asperity, suddenly allowing sliding over the locked portion of the fault, releasing the stored energy.

[Joe Schmoe]

If it were punishment for that, it would happen in a place where gays are most accepted and can marry. That would be Canada, parts of the U.S. and Mexico, Argentina, Spain, and a few other places in Europe.

In Israel you can't marry someone of the same sex, but you can do so elsewhere (where it's legal) and then register it in Israel.