By Patrick B. Craine
NEW YORK, NY, March 4, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Rabbi Yehuda Levin, spokesman for the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada, posted a video on YouTube last week entitled ‘Is Swine Flu a Punishment from God?’, in which he reflects from his Jewish perspective on the current flu outbreak and other grave issues.
“The question that people should be asking themselves is,” says Rabbi Levin, “why is there a sudden outbreak of swine flu?” According to ancient Jewish tradition, he says, when we are faced with a tragic event, “we are supposed to be introspective and ask ourselves: what and why is God doing this to people?”
Rabbi Levin goes on to connect the origin of the current swine flu outbreak in Mexico City with the fact that this same city recently legalized abortion. As a matter of fact, as Fr. Thomas J. Euteneuer, President of Human Life International, observes in his commentary on ‘Swine and Abortion’ for LifeSiteNews.com, the swine flu was officially announced by Mexican authorities on April 24th, two years to the day after abortion was made legal. Fr. Euteneuer, expressing similar sentiments to Rabbi Levin, says, “The connection just seems too eerie to be coincidental.” In making this connection, Rabbi Levin appeals to the Jewish concept that “God deals measure for measure,” and suggests that the current plague is God’s punishment for “baby-killing.”
He supports his argument by drawing a parallel between the swine flu crisis and the AIDS epidemic: “AIDS isn’t God giving a kiss to people who practice sodomy. AIDS is obviously a signal from God that sodomy is very, very much disapproved.” Then, commenting more broadly on STDs in general, he says, “This is God through nature sending a very clear message that this kind of misbehavior is going to have repercussions, negative repercussions.”
Illustrating the notion of spiritual cause and effect further, Rabbi Levin recounts how Prague was once subject to great floods due to a lack of respect for the deceased, because certain “progressive people” had attacked an ancient Jewish cemetery there. Citing another case, he says that in Lithuania there was once an attempt to develop on cemetery grounds, but consequently, there was an economic crisis, and the developers no longer had the money they needed. “There is a spiritual cause and effect,” he says, “and that’s what we’re seeing here with swine flu. So let’s wake up and understand that God does reign over us. There is a higher power. There is a cause and effect.”
As a final example, he connects the high concentration of swine flu victims in New York with the fact that that state is currently pushing to legalize homosexual “marriage”. He says: “Homosexual marriage is the last step in the decline of society before the floods of Noah that we read about in Genesis. So yes, this is a warning, this is a tough love warning. There’s a very, very serious cause and effect between misbehavior, licentiousness, not showing a respect for life, and not showing a respect for God’s moral laws, and the tragedies and the plagues that often occur.
“So whether we like it or not, let’s get back to standards of decency and morality, that God-willing we will be able to weather the floods, the storms, the devastations, the economic hardships, the swine flu, the AIDS and many other things as we return to the good graces of the good God.”
To view Rabbi Levin’s video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJLMXPY35nI
For Fr. Euteneuer’s commentary:
Commentary: Swine and Abortion
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/may/09050109.html