Sadly, No has a satirical piece on the Rabbinic Alliance of America’s statement that the earthquake in Haiti is due to homosexuality. While the piece is a little over the top it does provoke us to none the less ask the question, what if they were Muslim? The anti-Muslim blogosphere would be using it as an example of cruelty of Islam etc., but on this we don’t hear a peep out of them.

Silly Rabbi, Tricks are for Kids

Christian Newswire Media Advisory, February 3, 2010
1000 Rabbis Warn: Open Homosexuality in the Military is a Disaster and May Cause Further Natural Disasters

Fine, splendid, freshen it for me, then.

Uh, may cause further what, now?

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the Rabbinical Alliance of America issued the following 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.

At least they aren’t ‘ramming it down the throat’ of the military, like usually.¹ No, but Rabbi Levin seems like a man often shocked. More specifically, he seems like the sort of bully who flaps his arms and backs into you and then cries that you pushed him. That’s one of the best kinds, and we’re preparing for an ongoing relationship by assigning him a facile nickname (Rabbi “Yehuda Hellcares” Levi) and sketching out a Photoshop piece in which the female figure in this Marc Chagall painting is bearded and wearing a hat and tallis. Oh yes, and this we say to you, Shletero:² If their hair needs some highlights, and indeed if they’re being preferentially marked in attention-getting transparent yellow, these militant gays in the military,³ then azoy gay-it es.⁴ Yes, and furthermore:

…If you know what we’re saying, and we think that you farshtaist.⁵

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.

It’s like the equivalent of raping the troops with the spiritual equivalent of a big hairy moose peen, while his black friends watch.

We agree with Eileen Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness that this will hurt the cohesiveness of the military, cause many to leave the army, and dramatically lower the number of recruits, perhaps leading to the reinstatement of a compulsory draft.

Because the Center for Military Readiness is certainly not one of those phony wingnut security foundations that sprang up after 9/11.

“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.

That worked out great.

So no, basically, those hijacked airliners were like the egg beaters raining from the sky in the Far Side cartoon where the Indian is like, “Whoa, what kind of dance was I doing?” Because it was actually supposed to be a gay partnership G_d-mollifying dance, and instead it brought religious fanatics raining down in passenger aircraft? Like, um, really?

Because speaking just for myself, I personally would think it over before putting something on my rabbinical c.v. like “cockamamie prayers caused terror attacks of 9/11.” Because then the next thing is that everybody keeps looking at you funny every time something blows up nearby — as if nothing in the world ever blew up in a total spontaneous gaysplosion caused by G_d, as things so often do.

Example: June, 1999, when the Stonewall Inn was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and JFK Jr.’s plane immediately crashed into the ocean off Gay Head, Massachusetts. Another example is the Krakatoa explosion in 1883, caused by something Walt Whitman did.

These are the things they start to blame you for, when all you’re doing is walking around minding your own business and decrying the spiritual something-like-rape of the equivalent of the American soldier, not to mention sailor. Because whoops, there goes G_d again with the blowing-up and the kaboom, when barely over a year earlier you’d asked him not to do that.

We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. 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.

“All this is in the sink!” said the 2,000-Year-Old who is still teaching in the Talmud after all these years, and we should all be so lucky. “I keep calling Moe the plumber, and all I hear is that he’s coming. ‘Mr. Shiach is coming any time now,’ they say. Well, I’m still wai…[doorbell rings] holy cats, it’s Menachem Schneerson.”⁶

Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.

This reminds us for some reason: What has ol’ Pastor Swank been up to since the last time we…

J. Grant Swank, Jr., Truth in Conviction
CHRISTIAN VS. VOODOO IN HAITI

[...]

Now voodoo priests are up in arms about the contest. But they should realize that there is plenty of need to go around. Why do any persons have the strength or time to whine about others helping others?

If voodoo spokespersons want to spill goats’ blood and see drum their incantations, go to it. But don’t slam Christians who are working night and day to bring relief.

Because hey, that’s what you call a voo-don’t. But since there’s nothing out of the ordinary here, let’s go back to the rabbi.

“We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough.”

No argument here. Most heads are saner than the Rabbi’s even in Congress and the Pentagon, and P.S., have you seen what they’ve done to Sodom lately?

Rabbi Levin will be available to talk to the media in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, February 2, 2010, in proximity of the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings featuring Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Proximity just like in Chernobyl. No, seriously: It was an outstanding media availability in which Rabbi Levin really stood out, literally at the threshold of public hearing.

We miss him already and look forward to the next time he comes in the public’s eye, despite the mess and the stinging sensation.

---

¹ Cf., and cf. This style reaches what you’d have to call a climax in the following passage from wingnut conspiracy nut Jackie Jura: “Even cartoons ooze with sex, and every show lately pounds with homosexuality. Recently a movie named KINSEY got rave reviews for telling the story of zoologist-cum-sex researcher Alfred Kinsey who brought homosexuality and other deviations mainstream.” Research on zoologist cum is often misunderstood.² Var. ‘Shlomo’ (cf.)

³ Cf. Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language,” and its treatment of ‘dead’ and ‘dying’ metaphors. The infelicity in which a root word modifies itself seems suddenly to be everywhere (like the ancient and unstoppable grocer’s apostrophe and written air quote). An especially good example can be seen on a current billboard for People’s Bank, apparently quoting a Barron’s review which called them “A BANK TO BANK ON.” As though to complete the chain of irony, the phrase also appears in this May, 2007 Business Week item citing Bank of America as “a good defensive stock that has lagged the rally.” Merely gratuitous is the comic association here.

⁴ Yidd.: Azoy gait es (“that’s how it goes”). (Cf. Ger.: We’re gayin’.)

⁵ I.e., Mayn prom (shveb-shif) iz ful mit veners. This is by way of saying that one’s aéroglisseur or Luftkissenfahrzeug is full of anguilles or Aale, or in other words that ilmatyynyalukseni on täynnä ankeriaita.

⁶ The Lubavitchers now have a joke. When in the future they tell it, one can call out, “Number one!” and another can reply, “Feh.”

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira has been arrested for allegedly firebombing a mosque.  Rabbi Shapira published a book entitled The King’s Torah in which he claimed that it was permissible under Jewish law for a Jew to kill a non-Jewish civilian (including a child). He also advocated the expulsion or genocide of all male Palestinians above the age of thirteen.

One month ago, CNN reported:

Jerusalem (CNN) — Israeli police were questioning a relative of the late Jewish extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane in its probe of a Palestinian mosque firebombing in the West Bank earlier this month.

Today, BBC News reports:

Rabbi arrested, suspected in West Bank mosque arson

Israeli police have arrested a rabbi on suspicion of involvement in an arson attack on a mosque last month.

Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira, the head of a Jewish seminary in the settlement of Yitzhar, was arrested after he refused to co-operate, police said.

Mr Shapira denies any involvement in the attack, his lawyer was quoted in the Israeli media as saying.

Attackers burned the mosque’s carpet and a shelf of Qurans, and wrote slogans in Hebrew on the floor.

Police arrested some students from the seminary, the Od Yosef Hai yeshiva earlier this month, saying they wanted to investigate whether they were involved in the mosque attack.

Security sources said Rabbi Shapira was “suspected of involvement in an attempt to set fire to a mosque”.

Rabbi Shapira’s lawyer told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahranot that his client “denies any connection to the event”.

He was not co-operating with his investigators “in light of the Israel police’s conduct and their treatment of rabbis recently,” he said.

Rabbi Shapira published a controversial book last year which includes discussion of interpretations of the circumstances under which Jewish law permits Jews to kill non-Jews.

There have been protests by seminary students and a right-wing member of the Knesset outside the police station where he is being held.

The article then talks about extremist Jews who are threatening to attack Palestinians unless the Israeli government acts in a certain way:

Some hard-line settlers say they will attack Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.

It is a policy they call the “price tag”.

All Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

The price tag for the settlements?  Palestinian blood.  (Sorry, VISA or Mastercard not accepted.)  The goal is to make it too costly to restrict illegal Jewish settlements.  That’s the textbook definition of terrorism:

(n) terrorism: (the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature; this is done through intimidation or coercion or instilling fear

But I thought all terrorists are Muslims?

Mark Pelavin

Jewish leader Marke Pelavin comes out against Pat Robertson’s anti-Muslim remarks. He should be commended for commenting on this issue and condemning Robertson. We wish Governor-elect of Virginia Bob McDonnell, who receives monetary support from Robertson, could be as principled.

Mark Pelavin calls on Pat Robertson to Honor the Spirit of Religious Tolerance

Pelavin: Rev. Robertson’s opposition to the President’s message is more than a simple “disagreement.” Religious tolerance and diversity are central to the character of our nation.

WASHINGTON, November 15, 2002 - In response to Reverend Pat Robertson’s rejection of President Bush’s call for greater religious tolerance, Mark Pelavin, Associate Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, and Director of the Commission on Interreligious Affairs of Reform Judaism, issued the following statement:

Rev. Robertson’s opposition to the President’s message is more than a simple “disagreement.” Religious tolerance and diversity are central to the character of our nation.

Immediately following the President’s recent denunciation of intolerant remarks about Islam, in a November 14th interview on The 700 Club (Christian Broadcasting Network), Rev. Pat Robertson once again voiced shrill, bigoted remarks, as he called on “Jewish friends in America …[to] read the Koran, and see what it says…and when you get through, do us a favor, and don’t criticize your friends, but see who your real enemies are.”

Rev. Robertson’s askew and narrow-minded interpretation of Islam is offensive, not only to the majority of peace-loving Muslims worldwide, but to all who cherish the fabric of cultural and religious diversity that defines our nation. In the current climate of xenophobia, responsible religious and political leaders must denounce such bigotry. There is a palpable need for the kind of interfaith dialogue that fosters tolerance and understanding across cultural differences, and, yes, which allows us to ardently challenge each other when we think a partner is wrong and has failed to squelch religious bigotry and intolerance.

In this spirit, we welcome President Bush’s recent remarks. Rev. Robertson’s opposition to the President’s message is more than a simple “disagreement.” Religious tolerance and diversity are central to the character of our nation. We call on Rev. Robertson - and all religious leaders who have engaged in similar hateful speech - to honor the words of President Bush with an immediate apology, for the sake of religious decency.

Rabbi Elior Noam Chen

A Rabbi has been accused by Israeli officials of burning and cutting toddlers as part of a purification ritual. These stories are ugly and cast a dark shadow on adherents of faith, but one clearly notices how this case is being treated as a lone wolf acting out of a misguided direction. The case is rightly being cast as an aberration and does not impugn all of Judaism as the source of this Rabbi’s criminality. One has to ask though, that well worn question: “what if he were Muslim?”

A self-appointed rabbi accused by Israeli officials of burning and cutting toddlers as part of a purification ritual will be extradited from Brazil, an official said Thursday.

Elior Noam Chen will be picked up Oct. 27 in Brasilia by two Israeli agents, a Brazilian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to discuss the case.

An Israeli embassy official also confirmed that extradition was imminent for Chen.

Chen and several of his followers allegedly used knives, hammers and other instruments to abuse children as young as 3 and 4 years old in the West Bank settlement of Beitar Illit in February and March 2008.

Chen allegedly hit the children in the head and face and burned their hands. One child sustained permanent brain damage and is in a vegetative state, according to Israeli officials.

In Israel, Chen faces charges of child abuse, violence against minors and
conspiracy.

Brazilian police arrested Chen in Sao Paulo in June 2008 after a 45-day
manhunt. Police have not said how or when he and his family arrived in the South American country.

He fought extradition and his case was heard last May by Brazil’s Supreme
Court, which found there was cause for Chen to stand trial for allegedly
subjecting eight children to intense physical and mental suffering because they were supposedly possessed by the devil.

An appeal to the court was rejected last month.

His extradition had to be formalized by Brazil’s Justice and Foreign
Ministries, and final approval had to be given by Brazil’s President Luiz
Inacio Lula da Silva