Most of you have probably heard about the recent tragedy in Israel, where twenty-three people died when the floor of a wedding hall collapsed. Well, somebody thinks he knows why it happened. From an article in Salon:
Why don’t we think about this for a few seconds. There are billions of people all over the world who participate in mixed dancing. It’s been popular in this country and elsewhere for generations. But God has apparently just made the decision to smite these wicked and sinful people, and God only applied that decision in this one case.
And it may be that the floor only collapsed when the dancing started. Could that possibly be because dancing involves people moving around, thus probably applying more pressure to certain points on the floor?
Towards the end of the article, it states that investigators have already found that the floor was poorly constructed. Did God arrange it that way, just so that God could have a chance to slay these twenty-three people?
Anyway, can you imagine how relatives and people who were injured must have felt when they heard this nonsense?
Good one, ITR. There’s nothing more annoying than religious idiots like the fucknut above “explaining” tragedies with some sort of weird divine theory that serves their agenda. AIDS is Gods punishment to homosexuals, that’s another nice one.
I always wanna ask these characters if it would be Gods will as well, if I decided to bitch-slap them for their completely idiotic remarks.
Why, dare I ask, do some people feel compelled to reveal God’s hand in every event, no matter the circumstances? If God caused the floor to collapse because the people were dancing, then that’s rather odd. God is behaving a lot like the laws of physics. Floor collapses aren’t really his style, anyway. Back in the day, he’d rain fiery burning doom on them with a smile.
I think this is just a man taking advantage of a tragedy to shamelessly add a plug for his particular brand of salvation, something tragic in and of itself.
Some things I don’t get about this. Why did the rabbi agree to officiate at a wedding/reception that would involve men and women dancing together, if he’s got such a bug up his butt about it?
Contrariwise, if Orthodox Jews don’t dance, then presumably the bride and groom and their guests aren’t Orthodox. So why did they hire an Orthodox rabbi to officiate? Is it common in Israel to have Orthodox weddings even if you’re not Orthodox (much like, here in the States, many people who wouldn’t describe themselves as religious still have Christian, church weddings)?
I believe that if you want your marriage recognized as a Jewish marriage in Israel, you must be married by an orthodox rabbi.
So it makes sense that this crowd of (probably) secular Israelis would have an orthodox rabbi officiate.
How religiously observant you have to be to be called Jewish is a huge issue in Israel right now, and probably will be as long as there are fundamentalist parties in positions of power in the government.
Heh, heh, heh. And you thought that you were the only nation with fundies?
I’ve been dealing with these self-righteous assholes most of my my life. After a while, you just zone them out.
At least our fundies dress differently, so you can spot them from a distance. Yours look like normal human beings - that is, until they open their mouths.
(OTOH - you guys really shouldn’t call these people “Orthodox”, a term which describes a very wide gamut of people, most of which are nice, sane, hard-working individuals. The people you’re referring to are the Haredim, commonly known as the “Ultra-Orthodox Jews”, who, well… )
Well, if that tragedy was, in fact, “God’s Work,” then the rabbi in question certainly is raising Cain about Israel’s police arresting the contractor, owner, and designer of that building, right?
Or if he’s not, then he’s the worst kind of filthy hypocrite making political points out of a tragedy and blaming God for it anyway.
What a fucking asshole. I can only imagine what the victim’s families must think of staements like this.
It reminds me of a sermon I heard a few years back. The preacher was talking about how some congregation member was flying in a plane when it went down. Something like 300 people died, but BY GOD this good Christian survived!
The worse part was the chorus of “Praise God!” and “Hallelula!” from the audience.
I, for one, am glad that God is finally getting his share of the blame for a natural disaster.
We’ve all heard situations like Sealemon’s–when a disaster is averted, God is praised. When a disaster happens, God is praised because it wasn’t any worse than it was!
If people are gonna thank God for the touchdowns, the Academy Awards, and the safe landings, they need to hold him at least partially responsible for the fumbles, the box-office flops, and the fiery crashes. If we insist on counting the hits, we need to count the strikeouts, too.
well, the family that came on my college’s campus 2 years ago with giant signs proclaiming all us college students were going to hell because we were learning didn’t look too normal. Of course, we had different people telling us that each week. i miss it now that i am gone.
Too bad we can’t play “spot the looney” in the USA, we gotta play “listen to the looney”
oh, that’s all Satan’s fault, don’t ya know? And i think Satan had something to do with the Acadamy Awards the year Shakespeare in Love won…
I live 30 miles from a town that has a city ordinance that prohibits dancing and drinking in the same establishment. In other words, you can dance, or you can drink alcohol. But you can’t do it in the same place, at the same time.
I guess they think that this will prevent lust from taking over the town. Obviously, if you are sober, you will use your better judgement and not have sex with the person you were dancing with. And conversely, if you are drinking, and you are attracted to someone, since you can’t dance with them you won’t be “shoved over the edge” and make a pass at them (leading to sex.)
Well, whatever. Evidentally they have found the key to preventing the sin of lust from entering their whole town. Oh, did I mention that this town has a higher percentage of teen pregnancy than my (sinful) town?
And besides, in reference to the OP…in the Bible, David danced. How do these people handle THAT little snippet of information?
Please excuse any errors in spelling, syntax and grammar in this post. I am drinking (lemonade) and dancing (aerobic) in my living room, and my brain has become disengaged by the two activities happening at the same time.
Alessan, how are Haredim different than Hassidim? Are Hassidim just one specific group (parts of Europe), vs. Haredim being of particular strictness?
Re: the op, I always thought of dancing as one of the best expresssions of joy, and there are planty of indications in the Torah that one should express joy…
I can’t help but wonder what this guy’s reaction to the latest piece of Arab-Jewish insanity. Last night a suicide bomber blew himself and (last body count I heard) 15 civilians up in Tel Aviv, wounding a lot more. It seems to me that on the scale of things for an Ultra-orthodox rabbi to worry about and try to fix, dancing is pretty far down on the list.
Yup. My Dad has visited Israel several times, and the only incident of violence that he has ever witnessed there was when a group of about five or six of them tried throwing stones and bricks at a trolley that ran past part of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Fortunately, a group of police officers was there to hold them off. The police were well prepared, since this apparently happens on a regular basis.
