May 31, 2001 | JERUSALEM (AP) – In Israel’s worst civilian disaster, the Versailles wedding hall floor gave way last week just as dancing began, dumping hundreds into an abyss three floors below. More than 300 people were injured.
On Thursday, the Orthodox rabbi who conducted the wedding was quoted by a newspaper as saying the dance floor might have collapsed because men and women were dancing together. Rabbi Reuven Levy said mixed dancing is “incest” and “punishable by a divine death sentence,” according to the Jerusalem weekly Kol Ha’ir. Backing up his theory, he told the paper the floor held during the wedding vows but collapsed only when the dancing started.
Levy refused to talk to The Associated Press, but his wife, Yehudit, said, “He did say such a thing.” However, she said the rabbi did not say he was certain why the floor collapsed. “We don’t know why the Almighty does what he does,” she said.
The statement outraged secular Israelis and other rabbis. Mossi Raz, a lawmaker from the secular Meretz party, said Levy was “taking Israel back 200 years” into darkness.
—Anyone know how to say, “bite me, Reuven” in Hebrew?
This reminds me of the famous story of the Miracle Rabbi of a small shtetl in Poland in the 1800s.
It seems that the Miracle Rabbi was out walking on the Sabbath, and he saw a man smoking a cigar in the doorway of a building. Filled with wrath that the man was breaking the holy day, the Miracle Rabbi vowed that he would cause the house to come crashing down around the man’s ears.
“But wait,” thought the Miracle Rabbi, “What if there are honest and pious persons in the house? I cannot punish THEM along with this man!”
So the Miracle Rabbi spared the house. And that same house is still standing in the town; you can see it to this day.
On the OP. I’ve always wondered about those ‘it’s God’s will’ folk, too. I remember being in the ICU when a dear friend breathed his last, his wife and son and a few close friends, and one of 'em hugged the wife as he stopped breathing and said “now we can see how great our god is”.
A secular Jewish man falls in love with a deeply religious Orthodox woman, and they decide to marry. Through her, he starts to come back to his faith, and they agree to be married by an Orthodox rabbi and live and raise their future kids as observant people.
But the young man is concerned. He realizes that he has a great deal to learn about Jewish law, and is very afraid that he may err by accident. So he goes to the rabbi a few days before the wedding to talk.
“Rabbi,” the young man says, “I know that I have a lot to learn, but I can rely on my fiance to guide me. But there is one area that I’m too embarrased to talk to my fiance about, and that is sex. After we are married, are we allowed to have sex?” “Of course you are,” responds the rabbi, “sex between a man and wife is a blessing.”
The young man is pleased, but still concerned. “But are there any rules about how we have sex? Can my wife be on top of me?” “Certainly. There is no problem with that”, says the rabbi.
“Well, what about sex from behind?” “Again, no problem”
“Just one more question,” says the young man. “Can we have sex standing up?”
“Oh no,” says the rabbi. “That is forbidden. It might lead to dancing.”
Er bolbet narishkeiten (he doesn’t know what he is talking about)
Groisser potz! (what I would call him)*
Gai tren zich! (what I would like to say to him)**
