Levinstein espouses more homophobic remarks
With dust not yet settled after Orthodox rabbi rocked the notion of gender equality in the IDF, and 7 months after issuing an apology for disdainful comments against LGBT community, rabbi heard on recording comparing homosexuals to incestuous relationship; maintains gays are 'perverts.'
Speaking to his students last week, Levinstein, who has been the focus of headlines over the past few days over disparaging comments against the integration of women in the IDF, compared same-sex relationships to incestuous relationships.
In another recording has surfaced, Levinstein, who heads the Bnei David pre-military modern Orthodox academy in Eli, can be heard recounting a conversation which allegedly took place between him and the parents of a homosexual individual.
“We had an argument about what to call a boy like this. I said that I call him a pervert,” he said, much to the mother’s dismay.
“‘Are you crazy? In our home you call him a pervert?’” she apparently yelled, to which Levinstein claims to have responded without any hesitation: “He is a pervert. A brother who comes onto his sister, is that ok in your opinion? In our mind that is the same thing in the list of this mess.”
He went on to say that he recommended that the mother describe her son as someone with “opposite tendencies,” prompting her to ask who decides on the definition of opposite. “I looked at her and said to myself in my heart: what a poor woman. We really have gone totally mad,” he recalled.
Levinstein then joked at the mother’s expense, telling his listeners that she asked him if he wanted to stone her son to death, as is decreed in the Torah. “To tell you the truth, that is a little difficult. I don’t know if we would manage to catch him.”
During the same lecture, Levinstein claimed that women who choose to draft into IDF combat units only do so “in order to improve their social status.”
The girls who fall prey most to the notion of drafting, Levinstein asserted, were those from the periphery.
“Ashkenazi Jewesses say to them: Do you want to be equal to us like Tel Aviv people? Go to Karakal (the female snipers on the border with Sinai).
But the rabbi appears to have been aware of the controversial and offensive nature of what he was telling his students. “You can’t say that. It is racist, but the Ashkenazi girls to Unit 8200, play on computers and go home. They live in Ramat Aviv (an affluent area of Israel) and serve in Glilot, (a base known for its comfortable conditions).”
He also used the opportunity to attack male soldiers serving in combat units alongside women.
“Has anyone ever lay next to a woman during an ambush? The last thing you are thinking about is the terrorists. That is why they put them in places without terrorists, like in the Arabah desert. There isn’t even a mouse there. Who lives in Arabah? People from Thailand who work with cucumbers? There has never been anything there. So what happens in this ambush? Do they pray together?”
