A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu.
About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars.
The flight's aim was "to stop the pandemic so people will stop dying from it", Rabbi Yitzhak Batzri was quoted as saying in Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
The flu is often called simply "H1N1" in Israel, as pigs are seen as unclean.
51 comments
That's a novelty. In some parts of America the blowing of horns will come before the flying. At least the Jewish mystics don't have to wait 10 billion, billion, trillion years, or as the American mystics would have it, soon, to do their flying.
"The flu is often called simply "H1N1" in Israel, as pigs are seen as unclean."
It's called H1N1 at the Center for Disease Control, too, to distinguish it from the Swine Flu outbreak of 1976.
EDIT: And I'm not surprised if they'll eventually announce that their flyover-horn-blowing "worked" ... because so far, H1N1 has proven to be less deadly overall than the average flu outbreak.
"A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu."
A real life Monty Python sketch.
Honestly I can kind of respect this sort of ritual. I mean, I don't think it's going to do anything, but it's not really hurting anyone, and little superstitions like this keep people sane sometimes.
"A group of rabbis and Jewish mystics have taken to the skies over Israel, praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu."
If the universe has any sense of humor at all each and every one of them will contract swine flu.
"The flu is often called simply "H1N1" in Israel, as pigs are seen as unclean."
And the connection is, what? Because the animal is "unclean" so is the word?
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
Oh fuck hold on!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
praying and blowing ceremonial horns in a plane to ward off swine flu.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oh holy shit! These religious comedians are just too fucking much! Stop it!
About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars.
HEHEHEHEHEHEHHEHEHE
Can you imagine all these religious crazies running around like headless chickens, chanting nonsense toward an empty sky. Holy fuck, what a bunch of idiots!
Let me be the first to say this, H1N1 is still with us and will be for a long time, these religious dolts had exactly ZERO effect on the H1N1 virus.
I wonder what they did when the SARS spread. After all, birds are, on the contrary, highly reverred.
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Pope Gregory and the citizens of Rome tried the same thing in the 6th century (on foot, not in planes, of course) to stop the Plague. It didn't work then, either. I think Jesus nailed it when he spoke of the hypocrites who "love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward."
WTF? I have had Swine Flu. Been ill for the last couple of weeks. Felt like shit. Turned out I was quite grateful our IT department lacked the wit ... oh, never mind... weren't able to arrange for me to work from home with only 1 week notice. And what the hell is the thing about the name? H1N1? Clean or unclean? Either my fever has got the better of me or the fuckin' fundie has blown my brain out with his ceremonial horn... Um, honey? It feels better if you just massage it right there.. Yes, like that. Oh, yeah...
Meanwhile in Bumblefuck, Arkansas, several Billy-Bobs with 'The Calling', not to be outdone, have taken to driving around the county in a 1964 Dodge flatbed truck strumming the beJezus out of their banjos to ward off Teh Ghey and any other librul diseases the wind might blow in. If this proves successful, hear tell theyuns will be joined by the Reverend Uncle Daddy Jim-Bubba and his git-fiddle, and also cousin Donny Ray may set in with his jaw harp.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEDawgies!
Yeah, That'll work, crazy shit always works. Praying to an imaginary deitys always works.
Praying's really worked there
Haha! That's funny and silly and clownish. At least they're not causing or advocating any serious harm though and I doubt the Israeli Health Ministry is advocating this as a preventative measure. This is almost refreshing.
Sure, they're not causing any harm, apart from a futile waste of time and resources. For every chanting, devout moron on that plane, there's one less rational inquirer figuring out how to do something practical to improve the world.
And the really pathetic thing? When this crazy endeavour turns out to have no measurably beneficial effect whatsoever, it's unlikely that even one of these cretins will change their beliefs one bit; worse, when the epidemic clears up naturally or because of scientific intervention, there will now be plenty of gullible imbeciles on the ground who will naively believe this goddamn flying circus actually did help, out of the good old correlation-causation fallacy.
so the best way to stop the spread of swine flu is to get everyone on a plane where you breath eachother's exhalations through a badly run air conditioning system.
It's a bit like those guys with contageous diseases taking it in turn to have a bath in Lourdes.
"About 50 religious leaders circled over the country on Monday, chanting prayers and blowing horns, called shofars."
Which'll have as much effect as a goose farting in the fog, for all the good it'll do against Swine Flu.
And I thought this was supposed to be the 21st Century, not 2009 BCE.
Well, the bright side is that they're not sacrificing virgins or something.
Although I think a good PR campaign advocating hand washing and staying the hell out of public places when you're sick would be money better spent.
That's why we have vaccinations, you know, one of the products of modern medicine, based on real science.
Your beliefs belong in societies far more primitive than ours.
Admittedly, that's far more sensible than some of the other things I've heard people say about swine flu.
"We should all start drinking bottled water." Sure- repeatedly leaving the house to go to a shop frequented by other people in order to buy a product handled by other people is far safer than drinking treated, untouched water from pipes leading directly into your house. Oh, by the way, it's not water-borne anyway and you're worrying too much.
@Doubting Thomas:
OK, I would like it explained to me exactly how flying over the countryside blowing horns is going to ward off the swine flu, and why the same thing can't be done on the ground.
They won't do their little publicity stunt on the ground, in case they catch swine flu themselves . I expect they'll give it a bit of spin and say flying gets them closer to their god or something, though. They don't want people to think they're stupid or hypocrites...
I dunno why they bother. It's not like swine flu has proven itself to be more than a general nuisance (fully realizing, of course, that general nuisance diseases do kill people daily, just not in vast quantities).
People were afraid that this was going to be Spanish Flu all over again. Spanish Flu infected hundreds of millions of people and killed around 25 million in a single year. Swine flu is but a pale shadow of that thus far, and it doesn't appear to be changing for the worse.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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