Dear Pope Francis,

On behalf of my coreligionists, I convey our heartfelt appreciation for your recent comments criticizing the Allies’ failure to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the concentration camps during the Holocaust.

Over three decades of addressing the March for Life in Washington, D.C., I have had occasion to defend distinguished prelates such as the late Cardinal John O’Connor who used the term “Holocaust” to refer to the horrific plague of abortion. I realize that the use of this term by Christians is not an attempt to downplay the uniquely evil savagery of lining up millions of naked grandparents, parents and children and machine gunning them into open pits, or marching them into gas chambers. Rather, it is a desperate attempt to reach for a terminology which conveys the unspeakable horror of the elimination of scores of millions of preborn babies, which G-d Himself calls murder in Genesis 9:6.

I wish to share a 2,000 year-old crucial teaching which places even the horror of mass murder, abortion, and the Holocaust in a different light:

What can possibly be worse than the murder of an innocent? The Rabbis teach us that introducing a person into licentiousness and promiscuity is a greater spiritual transgression than murdering him! For murder only terminates “this worldly” life, while one who is introduced, encouraged or supported in promiscuous behavior is being eliminated “spiritually” in this world and the next! The misbehavior may well be passed down by the sinner to future generations, as well as to other associates. Thus one may posit that encouraging and codifying promiscuity is a “spiritual” Holocaust!

For if he who saves an individual saves a world (i.e., potential progeny, etc.); one may argue that debauching an individual, and G-d forbid, a society, is spiritually akin to destroying many worlds.

Thus the Orthodox Jewish Community is very much in sync with the March 28, 2003 document authored/approved by your two direct predecessors.

“Legal recognition of homosexual unions… (is) the approval of deviant behavior, with the consequence of making it a model in present day society.”

The statement continues with a charge to defend traditional marriage — applying to all of society and in particular the Church —and to oppose same-gender unions (and certainly “marriage”), and even if such a law passes, to oppose it, as the document refers to this as a “duty to witness to the truth.”

We further salute the pontiff for his 2010 statement regarding proposed same gender marriage in Argentina as “destructive of the plan of G-d.”

Esteemed pontiff, on behalf of billions of people worldwide who are horrified by the manifold negative ramifications of legalized same gender marriage or “unions” which not even the residents of Sodom had the Chutzpah/temerity to codify, we beseech you to vigorously, consistently and unequivocally echo your distinguished predecessors’ statements, theology and philosophy, both here while visiting America, and during the upcoming Synod and beyond it in Rome.

Only an equal and opposite reaction to immorality, expressed most especially by religious leaders and followers, can help us return to His values and avoid further catastrophe.

With hope and respect,

Rabbi Yehuda Levin