Ultra-Orthodox B'nei B'rak Bans Smurfette from New Smurf Movie Ad

The Israeli Billboard

The Israeli Billboard on a Street in B'nai B'rak

The ultra-Orthodox town of B'nei B'rak in Israel has given a new meaning to blue movies.

When it became known that the latest Smurf movie Smurfs: The Lost Village included Smurfette, the blonde girl Smurf, the PR company promoting the film confirmed that it had removed images of Smurfette from promotional material in order to avoid causing offense to the central Israeli town’s residents.

As Sue Surkes wrote under the headline Smurfette too Sexy for ultra-Orthodox City in The Times of Israel,

Bnei Brak, a mostly ultra-Orthodox city, has an ordinance that prevents the hanging of posters of women that “might incite the feelings of the city’s residents.”

Other entertainment icons to have been erased from advertising posters in Bnei Brak and Jerusalem — which also has a large ultra-Orthodox community — include Jennifer Lawrence, star of the Hunger Games, and Tinkerbell, the cartoon character from Peter Pan.

Smurfette, brought to life in the movie with the voice of pop star Demi Lovato, plays a leading role in the new film. Along with Brainy, Clumsy and Hefty, she gets to race through the Forbidden Forest to discover what is said to be the biggest secret in Smurf history. The Hebrew word for Smurfs is Dardasim.

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.

Israeli Ad Agency Outwits Haredi Billboard Defacers

Original Poster

Last week an Israeli ad agency launched a clever campaign to promote public awareness of violence against women in Israel, outwitting the Haredi vandals who regularly deface billboards and posters that include images of women.

As Haaretz reported last week,

In a campaign coinciding with the United Nations' International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, marked on November 25, Israeli advertising firm Twisted tackled the issue of excluding women from the public sphere, Ice.co.il reported. 

Defaced Poster

In the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak, images of women on billboards are deemed immodest, especially if their knees, elbows and hair are uncovered. This is also true in Jerusalem, where advertisers refused to run ads on buses that picture women, out of fear the ads would be vandalized. 

Instead of fearing vandalism in Bnei Brak, Twisted used it in its favor, to help it get the message across: They put up a double-layered poster featuring a woman's face, and her hair and shoulders uncovered, knowing it would get vandalized, Ice reported.

Less than 24 hours after the poster went up, just as Twisted had predicted, the face of the woman in the poster was ripped off, the report said, revealing a message that read, "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 25.11.03." 

Israeli Haredi Rabbis Meet to Regulate Shapes of Bourekas

(PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS NOT A PURIM PARODY OR JOKE)

Photo: Vosisneias.com

Israeli Haredi rabbis are moving toward regulation of the shapes of bourekas, the popular puff pastry filled with morsels of potato, cheese, mushroom, spinach, and various other fillings including meat. 

They are concerned that if bourekas continue to be baked in the same shape whether they are filled with meat, dairy, or vegetable mixtures, the public will become confused and possibly serve the meat bourekas at a dairy meal or cheese bourekas at a meat meal.

As Sandy Eller wrote in Vosizneias.com,

In a meeting with members of the baking industry, Rabbi Chagi Bar Guriya of the Rabbanut Harashit, demonstrated how despite their different shapes, it almost impossible to determine the filling of any closed pastry including bourekas, cigars and croissants, which has in the past created problems for both kosher consumers and those with food allergies.

Saying that the health concerns for those with food allergies is an even greater problem than the potential kashrus issues, R’ Bar Guriya suggested that perhaps a new industry standard be adopted, with all pareve bourekas being completely closed, while those with dairy fillings be left partially opened so that their filling is visible, or using different shapes to designate the type of pastry filling.

Members of the baking industry who were present at the meeting countered that not all the suggestions made would be possible to implement and further requested that any decisions made should be enforced throughout the entire country.

The Rabbanut Harashit is expected to decide on an official policy shortly.

As is often the case, the comments by Vosizneias readers are more interesting than the articles. Some make fun of the seriousness shown by the rabbinate on this issue and point out that there are more pressing issues that should command their attention. Others quote sacred texts and direct readers to chapter and verse justifying unique shapes for meat and dairy products.

Some examples:

You have GOT to be kidding!

I wish they'd meet about how best to protect children within their communities at least as often as they meet about bourekas/croissants/pastries.

There are about 1,000 issues they need to tackle before they deal with this so-called "problem".

All satirical cynics can scoff all they want, but opening up Yorah Deah Ch 97 and view the content there will seperate (sic) between fact and paradiddle.

We think that regulating size and shape of baked goods is a slippery slope that could lead to changing the appearance of cheese danish, limiting the size of soft drinks, and keeping the cigars separate from the partially open bourekas lest they (chas v'chalilah) lead to mixed dancing. Somehow our local kosher bakery found a simpler solution: all dairy baked goods are on gold trays, next to a sign that says all items on gold trays are dairy. 

(A tip of the kippah to Jack Kustanowitz for bringing this story to our attention.)

Old Jews Telling Jokes: "Tuberculosis"

After a few days of patriotic posts we figure it's time for a change of pace with another selection from the newest crop of Old Jews Telling Jokes.

This one comes to us from Howard Eichenwald, a 65-year-old software developer. Called "Tuberculosis,"it touches on two genres of these classic clips. One is the medical genre, when a visit to the doctor results in a grim diagnosis. The other is the misunderstood explanation, which was probably very common in the early part of the 20th century, when many Jews spoke (and listened) with a pronounced (or mispronounced) accent.

After you've finished groaning, we hope you'll like it, and even pass it along to some friends. Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.) 

What a Week! OU OKs Buying Coffee at McDonald's (But Don't Sit Down); Love Songs Are Forbidden; Adam Sandler Poster Defaced

It's been a mixed week for anyone who lives according to the latest rabbinic pronouncements. Here's the bottom line:

PERMITTED:

- Buying coffee at McDonald's rest stops (as long as you don't sit down)

FORBIDDEN:

- Listening to popular love songs

- Looking at photos of Adam Sandler in drag

Now for the details:

The Orthodox Union published an article on its web site last week declaring that it is permissible to buy a cup of coffee on the road at non-kosher rest stops, specifically mentioning McDonald's, arguably the ultimate in non-kosher establishments.

Citing a talmudic argument in the Gemara Avoda Zara (page 31b) that one may not drink beer (a common beverage) in a non-Jewish establishment because it can lead to intermarriage, the article, citing leading poskim (rabbinic decisors) Rabbi Yisroel Belsky and Rabbi Herschel Schachter, says that coffee today is similar to beer in talmudic times.  Just as there was a requirement then to take the beer back to their house before drinking, now a traveler should drink the McDonald's coffee in the car or while sitting in a public rest stop seat, because drinking it at a restaurant table might lead someone watching to come to the incorrect conclusion that he or she was about to eat a meal there.

So McDonald's coffee is OK to drink in your car, but when you turn on the radio, you'd better not tune in a station that plays popular love songs if you are a follower of Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Safed, Israel.

A blog that we follow, Tzvee's Talmudic Blog, called our attention to an article in Kipa, an Israeli Orthodox Hebrew web site that reports on Rabbi Eliyahu's declaration last week:

The Rav of Safed, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, rules against listening to songs or music that are about romance. In a responsum to be published this weekend in 'Small World', Rabbi Eliyahu claims that these kinds of popular songs do not deal with love, but with passions and obscenities.

In a personal attack on the singers and poets of today, Rabbi Eliyahu claims that "Those who read the biography of these singers are seeing that most of them have never experienced true love, but mostly lust. They can not sustain a relationship with a woman for more than three days, weeks or months. They never heard of mutual trust. "

Rabbi Eliyahu says that, "You should not be confused. They call it love - because they just do not know any better." In practice, Rabbi Eliyahu explained that those singers "really sing songs of praise to our coarsest senses," and so he rules that "It is forbidden to drift through their songs after these low feelings."

Meanwhile, in Israel, posters for the new movie Jack and Jill, with Adam Sandler playing both a twin brother and his sister in a comedy that the critics were not kind to, were defaced by a someone who blacked out the image of Sandler in drag. While we can't trace the vandalism to a specific rabbinic directive, it's symptomatic of a trend among the haredi population to advocate the removal of all images of women in public places.

We wrote about this trend in 2009 when billboards of models were being defaced in B'nei B'rak. But this time we're not sure whether the person who defaced the movie poster did so because of religious sensibilities or because he couldn't bear to look at a feminine version of Adam Sandler. 

Here's the trailer for the movie. Judge for yourself.

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)  

Kosher Cell Phones in Israel Get Yiddish Commands and Ringtones

"Kosher" cell phones have been used by Haredi Jews in Israel for years, but this year they got a new feature that they have been clamoring for -- all commands and ringtones in Yiddish.

So what could be kosher about a cell phone?

As Maayan Lubell wrote in a Reuters dispatch in May,

Israel's kosher cellular phone market has a new model, a device with a Yiddish interface to help devout Jews combine tradition with modern technology.

Hundreds of thousands of mobile phones, popularly dubbed kosher because they block access to services frowned upon by ultra-Orthodox rabbis, have been operating in the Jewish state for years.

Last month, Israel's second largest mobile provider, Partner introduced what it hailed as the world's first Yiddish cell phone, manufactured by Alcatel-Lucent.

Marc Seelenfreund, CEO of Israeli Accel Telecom which imports and distributes mobile phones to all Israeli operators, had a special team of translators work for months to develop an interface entirely in Yiddish.

Yiddish, a mixture of medieval German and Hebrew, was the spoken language of millions of European Jews for centuries, but it is now spoken mostly by elderly Jews and in ultra-Orthodox communities.

Yiddish words such as chutzpah, schmaltz or schlep, may have entered the English language, but Seelenfreund said ultra-Orthodox Jews would appreciate terms like "outgoing call," "ringtone" and "vibrate" translated into Yiddish.

Seelenfreund said the market for Kosher phones was substantial, estimating there are up to 400,000 users in Israel and another 500,000 in the United States.

While handsets have become ever more sophisticated, offering increasingly high-tech features, kosher cell phones have no text messaging capabilities, Internet access or camera and block calls to sex lines.

Concerns about erotic phone services and forbidden text messaging between members of the opposite sex prompted leaders of Israel's ultra-Orthodox community to set up a rabbinical committee on Internet and cell phone use several years ago.

The words "kosher" and "approved by the rabbinical committee for telecommunications" appear on the screen when a kosher cell phone is turned on.

"There are many problems with today's phones, many temptations," said Rabbi Baruch Shraga, a member of the committee.

"One can reach very immodest places on the Internet and people will write in a text message lewd things which they would not dare say aloud. Some laws prohibit hearing a woman sing, so ringtones are also restricted," Shraga said.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews are believed to make up about 8 to 10 percent of the population of 7.7 million in Israel.

"We sell thousands of Kosher cell phones a month which also offer special features like a Jewish holiday calendar and Hassidic ringtones," said Estie Rozen, a spokeswoman for Cellcom, Israel's largest mobile operator.

Check out the full story in the CNN video below. 

 

(A tip of the kippah to Dan Mosenkis for bringing this video to our attention.)

Haredi Newspaper Photoshops Hillary Clinton Out Of Iconic White House Bin Laden Mission Photo

BEFORE

AFTER

A Yiddish Haredi Brooklyn newspaper, Der Zeitung, has printed a revisionist version of the iconic photo of the White House staff watching a live telecast of the assault on Osama Bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan by removing Hillary Clinton and a female staffer from the picture.

Reporting in today's Jerusalem Post, Jordana Horn writes:

The photograph showing President Barack Obama and staffers in the White House Situation Room carefully watching the raid in progress by US forces in Pakistan on the bin Laden compound last Sunday has been published far and wide.

One Hassidic paper in Brooklyn, however, has chosen to alter the photo – excising Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and another female staffer from the picture.

First reported in the blog failedmessiah.typepad.com, the photoshopped picture was published in the Yiddish newspaper Der Zeitung (The Time) on Friday, with empty spaces where Clinton had been sitting and where the female staffer had stood.

While Der Zeitung had no comment as to why it altered the picture, many conjectured that it was either because of concerns about immodesty, or strong feelings that women should not be in positions of power.

“This is a bit silly,” one commentator wrote at failedmessiah. “Secretary of State Clinton was not dressed immodestly. There was no intent of objectification in the photo. Haven’t the editors got something better to do?”

This isn't the first instance of  Haredis eliminating photos of women from public display. In October 2009 we posted a story about how a Haredi news blog airbrushed the face of model Bar Refaeli from a clothing billboard in B'nei B'rak. And she wasn't wearing immodest clothing, either.

36 Haredi Rabbis Ban Vos Iz Neias, Most Popular Jewish Web Site

Last December, we did an exhaustive post about Haredi rabbis in Israel banning Haredi web sites.  Since we started this blog more than a year ago, we've reported bans on clothing, billboards, perfume, music lessons,  even the female face.  But rabbis banning their own web sites?  That seemed a bit much.  

Well, yesterday, they went a step further.  The Jewish Channel News reported that 36 Haredi Rabbis issued a ban on visiting and advertising on the Most Visited Jewish web site, Vos Iz Neias (VIN).  VIN, which translates from Yiddish as What Is News, gets more traffic than JTA, The Jewish Daily Forward, and The Jewish Week, mostly from orthodox readers.

We've been reading VIN regularly to find sources of Jewish humor, just as we check Jewish and Israeli newspapers and other web sites.  We've always found VIN to be on the conservative side, for the most part aggregating and reprinting world and Jewish news from many sources such as daily newspapers and web sites, always giving credit to the source.

We suspect what's irking the rabbis is not the straight news reporting, but the comments that supposedly haredi orthodox readers are adding to the posted articles.  For controversial topics, these comments stir up emotions as they express contrary views, often in a broken, yeshivish English.  We find the comments and the fact of their existence often funny, and sometimes they point us in the direction of a funny story to blog about.

But however crude some of the comments may be, they are an expression of free speech, and often demonstrate original thinking.  This is probably what the haredi leaders see as dangerous.

So take a look at The Jewish Channel video report on the ban below, and remember our comment when the subject first came up here last year:

Our (unsolicited) advice to the issuers of bans?  If you can read this, you should not be using the internet.  Press the "Delete" key.

Lighten up.  Better still, subscribe to Jewish Humor Central.