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THIS story is profoundly upsetting to any True Christian™ on multiple levels. The fact that a rabbi tried to weasel out of a speeding ticket doesn't surprise me at all. See if you can spot the horrors.
Rabbi beats speeding ticket
Quebec's Jewish chaplain for prisons got a speeding ticket quashed after convincing a judge he'd been rushing to a medical emergency: a baby boy who was bleeding from a ritual circumcision.
"It wasn't like I was going 120 kilometres an hour - I was going a reasonable speed," Jacob Lévy told Judge Alain St-Pierre in Outremont municipal court Monday, where he went to contest the ticket.
After listening to the rabbi's story, the judge said Lévy had proven the "necessity" of why he'd been speeding, and threw out the ticket.
Lévy, who used to be grand rabbi of Geneva and also lived in France, leads the Sephardic congregation at Beth Rambam synagogue in Côte St. Luc. Trained in Jerusalem as a mohel, the Hebrew word for circumciser, Lévy has been practising the ritual procedure for 30 years. His first case was his own son, he told St-Pierre at the Van Horne Ave. courtroom, where he'd brought along his surgical kit as proof of his trade.
Lévy testified he'd received an emergency call from a distraught mother in Côte St. Luc whose 8-day-old boy had been recently circumcised. The bandage had come off and the boy was bleeding into his diaper. The date of the incident was not mentioned in court, nor the speed at which Lévy was travelling.
"The mother was upset and wanted me to get there as soon as possible," said Lévy, who is also a rabbinical judge in Montreal's francophone Jewish community. "The boy was bleeding, and that's always serious."
Why didn't the mother simply call 911 and have the boy taken to hospital? St-Pierre asked.
"Doctors don't like to treat circumcision cases because the practice is so rare nowadays here - they prefer to leave it to specialists like me," replied Lévy, who said he carries a number of products in his medical kit to staunch blood if there are complications.
Dressed in a black pinstriped suit with black sneakers on his feet and a kippa on his head in the near-empty courtroom, the nervous-looking rabbi described himself as a professional circumciser but did not mention his other, very public roles in Quebec's large Jewish community. As an immigrant advocate for Jewish rights, he has a high profile. Last spring, he was named the province's official Jewish chaplain for prisons, succeeding another rabbi who'd held the job for two decades. As part of his prison duties, Lévy ensures inmates get kosher meals, Jewish prayer books and leather tefillin, which orthodox Jews wear to pray. He also arranges special day passes for Jewish inmates to attend marriages and funerals. Lévy is also qualified as a shochet, a ritual slaughterer of animals.
In April 2006, he protested the high cost of kosher meat in Montreal by slaughtering lambs himself for the Passover holiday and selling the meat cheaply. The move got him censured by the Grand Rabbinat du Québec, which declared the meat not kosher because it didn't have the stamp of approval of the Va'ad Ha'ir, the organization which supervises kosher labelling in the city.
For the last two years, Quebec has been in the throes of multiple controversies over "reasonable accommodations" of religious minorities, including orthodox Jews.
Told of the speeding charge and Lévy's acquittal, a prominent Côte St. Luc rabbi expressed amazement.
"The court bought the story?" asked Reuben Poupko, who leads the Beth Israel Beth Aaron congregation. "It shows we're really living in a shtetl."
Quebec's Jewish chaplain for prisons got a speeding ticket quashed after convincing a judge he'd been rushing to a medical emergency: a baby boy who was bleeding from a ritual circumcision.
"It wasn't like I was going 120 kilometres an hour - I was going a reasonable speed," Jacob Lévy told Judge Alain St-Pierre in Outremont municipal court Monday, where he went to contest the ticket.
After listening to the rabbi's story, the judge said Lévy had proven the "necessity" of why he'd been speeding, and threw out the ticket.
Lévy, who used to be grand rabbi of Geneva and also lived in France, leads the Sephardic congregation at Beth Rambam synagogue in Côte St. Luc. Trained in Jerusalem as a mohel, the Hebrew word for circumciser, Lévy has been practising the ritual procedure for 30 years. His first case was his own son, he told St-Pierre at the Van Horne Ave. courtroom, where he'd brought along his surgical kit as proof of his trade.
Lévy testified he'd received an emergency call from a distraught mother in Côte St. Luc whose 8-day-old boy had been recently circumcised. The bandage had come off and the boy was bleeding into his diaper. The date of the incident was not mentioned in court, nor the speed at which Lévy was travelling.
"The mother was upset and wanted me to get there as soon as possible," said Lévy, who is also a rabbinical judge in Montreal's francophone Jewish community. "The boy was bleeding, and that's always serious."
Why didn't the mother simply call 911 and have the boy taken to hospital? St-Pierre asked.
"Doctors don't like to treat circumcision cases because the practice is so rare nowadays here - they prefer to leave it to specialists like me," replied Lévy, who said he carries a number of products in his medical kit to staunch blood if there are complications.
Dressed in a black pinstriped suit with black sneakers on his feet and a kippa on his head in the near-empty courtroom, the nervous-looking rabbi described himself as a professional circumciser but did not mention his other, very public roles in Quebec's large Jewish community. As an immigrant advocate for Jewish rights, he has a high profile. Last spring, he was named the province's official Jewish chaplain for prisons, succeeding another rabbi who'd held the job for two decades. As part of his prison duties, Lévy ensures inmates get kosher meals, Jewish prayer books and leather tefillin, which orthodox Jews wear to pray. He also arranges special day passes for Jewish inmates to attend marriages and funerals. Lévy is also qualified as a shochet, a ritual slaughterer of animals.
In April 2006, he protested the high cost of kosher meat in Montreal by slaughtering lambs himself for the Passover holiday and selling the meat cheaply. The move got him censured by the Grand Rabbinat du Québec, which declared the meat not kosher because it didn't have the stamp of approval of the Va'ad Ha'ir, the organization which supervises kosher labelling in the city.
For the last two years, Quebec has been in the throes of multiple controversies over "reasonable accommodations" of religious minorities, including orthodox Jews.
Told of the speeding charge and Lévy's acquittal, a prominent Côte St. Luc rabbi expressed amazement.
"The court bought the story?" asked Reuben Poupko, who leads the Beth Israel Beth Aaron congregation. "It shows we're really living in a shtetl."
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