Israeli rabbis discuss whether Asian tsunami was "divine retribution"

One of Israel's chief rabbis has described the Asian earthquake disaster as divine retribution. "This is an expression of God's ire with the world," the Sephardic chief rabbi Shlomo Amar told the Reuters news agency. "The world is being punished for wrongdoing – be it people's needless hatred of each other, lack of charity, moral turpitude." But this interpretation of the tsunami in the Indian Ocean was disputed by another rabbi, Daniel Isaak of Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland, Oregon. "This is not something that God has done. God hasn't picked out a certain group of people in a certain area of the world and said: 'I am going to punish them'".