Rabbi Yahuda Levin is fanboying all over Kim Davis. His reason? He believes that she is racking up heavenly reward points by refusing to do her job. Of course, he also believes that earthquakes, hurricanes and child murders are all the fault of homosexuality.
In grand example of “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history,” ultra-conservative Rabbi Yahuda Levin announced his jealousy of Kim Davis, the recently-freed Kentucky county clerk who refused to do her job. In Levin’s own words:
“On a theological basis, I am absolutely jealous of this woman, every minute she [sat] in prison to honor God’s name she obtain[ed] an immense heavenly reward. Kim Davis is giving us, the entire country, another opportunity to make a reckoning of what is happening here.”
Defining exacty what is happening, Levin added that “This just has to be called out for what it is, homo-fascist bullying. We are already at the tipping point into the depths of Sodom.” Even that, he added, “did not have the temerity and the chutzpah (as we say in Jewish) to codify same gender marriage. … As bad as they were and they were — destroyed because of sodomy — they nevertheless never codified same gender ‘marriage.’”
Oy vey, Mary (as we say over the rainbow), are we on the same planet?
Apparently not, it seems. For those wondering who Levin is, he’s a Brooklyn-based Rabbi who hosts a weekly radio show. He’s also the official spokesperson for the Rabbinical Alliance of America, which has 850 members.
Still not ringing any bells?
Rabbi Yahuda Levin is also the holy man who asserts that Hurricane Sandy was God’s punishment upon the heathens of New York for allowing same-sex marriage. He also infamously stated that the 2011 East Coast earthquake happened because I kissed a boy and I like it.
Said he, “One of the reasons that God brings earthquakes to the world is because of the transgression of homosexuality. The Talmud states, ‘You have shaken your male member in a place where it doesn’t belong. I too, will shake the earth.’”
Excuse me, Rabbi, but were any member shaking going on, it is certainly none of your business. While I will neither confirm nor deny said shaking, the earth certainly did not move because of it.
Also in 2001, this man of God said an 8 year-old boy’s murder was a direct result of legalized same-sex marriage in New York. Never mind that the boy’s killer was a straight, divorced observant Jew; it was Adam & Steve’s fault for tying the knot. Maybe the reception wasn’t kosher? That was a banner year for Levin. He also marched in a hate rally in the Bronx that featured a live, onstage petition to execute LGBTQ people.
I opened this piece talking about history and that we learn nothing from it. I don’t personally care that Rabbi Levin is jealous of Kim Davis, that’s his thing and he’s welcome to it. What troubles me most is the Rabbi’s bizarre assertions (similar have been made by leaders of other faiths) that horrible things are happening because LGBTQ people exist. What’s even worse is his seeming support for our extermination. That, perhaps, is the most surprising thing I’ve read all week. And that’s precisely where history enters the picture.
Not only is a holy man preaching absolute hate, but he’s Jewish. Hello!? Holocaust anyone? How in the name of all this is good and holy a Jew is advocating for such hateful treatment of a whole class of people is beyond any logic I can possibly muster.
Horrible things were done to the Jewish people in the name of differences and hate, that is a fact of history. Of course, LGBTQ people were included in that persecution, though not in the same numbers as our Jewish brothers and sisters in suffering.
Yet here is Rabbi Levin, willing to stoke up the fires of hatred and intolerance. On top of it, according to a very learned friend of mine, the destruction of Sodom had nothing to do with men consensually shaking their members and everything to do with the townsfolk’s desire to rape guests in Lot’s home. That act of inhospitality (a much bigger deal then) prompted God to blow the city to bits. So, not only is this Jewish holy man preaching hatred against a certain class of people, he’s ignoring what happened to his people and getting Biblical history wrong.
I like to think of myself as a fairly open-minded guy, but I can’t, no matter how hard I try, find any logic in Levin’s stance. Admittedly, Talmudic history may be different than Biblical history and I’m not a scholar of either. However, human history clearly shows that, left unchecked, this type of hatred is extremely destructive.
It’s time to do better than we have done in the past. Jewish leaders don’t allow the Holocaust to fade into the mists of time (understandably so), yet here is one who seems bent on recreating it. I can only hope that there are others of all faiths who can see the dangers in this way of thinking and the slippery slope on which it puts us as a people.
My last comment on history is this:
If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it.
What are your thoughts, readers?
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