#235: Yehuda Levin

And still they come. Yehuda Levin is the Rabbi and founder of Congregation Mevakshei Hashem Synagogue in Brooklyn, New York. He is absolutely batshit insane and something of a kindred spirit of Fred Phelps.

Levin is Taliban-inspired terrorist material and a very loud religious fundamentalist who has a story of allying himself with evangelicals on social issues. He has been a vocal opponent of gay rights, and was involved in stopping a gay pride event in Jerusalem (the gays were there, apparently, to “attack The Holy Land”). He advocated the use of violence against the participants, saying “I promise that there's going to be bloodshed”. Last year he worked with Carl Paladino, and even prepared a rabid anti-gay statement for Paladino to read (which received national attention)​. Paladino later apologized for the statement, causing Levin to withdraw his support. His views on DADT are barely worth reporting. Levin also runs the website Jews for Morality, which says things like this.

Levin is also radically anti-abortion (he ran for mayor of New York City in 1985 on the Right to Life ticket). You can probably guess what rhetorical tactic he is using: the legality of abortion is a genocide, and bears as such many similarities to the Holocaust. You saw that coming, didn’t you?

In 2007 he was sent as an emissary by a groupo of Orthodox rabbis to Atlanta to perform an ancient prayer ritual to make it rain and end the drought in the South. Levin had invoked divine help by the same ritual in 1986, after which there was four days of rain: “[W]e wish to announce a program which we believe could curtail much of the disaster our country has been experiencing,” said Levin.

Diagnosis: A thoroughly despicable man, Levin is the kind of rabidly insane, hateful suicide-bomber material who needs some love and monitoring by responsible adults. He may have some influence, but he probably receives media attention because the media loves babbling maniacs like him rather than because of his number of followers.