Women Removed From Jerusalem Ads Due To Haredi Pressure

The safety advertisements for Jerusalem's new light-rail system have featured images of twins, to reinforce the idea of being "doubly safe." Children, teenagers and haredim have been pictured in this safety campaign – all of them males. The city built a lavish public  sukkah in Safra Square; the colorful, traditional holiday structure featured pictures of males only. Most private companies' Jerusalem billboards are now women-free, as well. And all of this is because of haredi pressure and haredi threats of violence.

 

Women noticeably absent from Jerusalem ads
Municipality officials deny change in policy, refer to several campaigns that featured images of women. Yet figures in city's public relations industry say women have been entirely removed from public billboards and advertisements.
By Nir Hasson • Ha’aretz

It appears that graphic artists and public relations professionals in Jerusalem have recently developed a fetish for shoes.

A glance at billboards and posters pasted around the city shows that Jerusalem is draped in shoes. For instance, announcements for the annual Jerusalem March picture two men's shoes against the backdrop of the city. Dance events also make use of shoe images.

"In Jerusalem, a shoe is not just a shoe," says Uri Ayalon, a Conservative rabbi who promotes religious pluralism, and who recently established an "uncensored" Facebook group that protests against the elimination of women from public spaces. Shoe images, he says, are used to obscure the fact that in Jerusalem women are rarely pictured on public posters and billboards.

It takes time to grasp that something is missing in public spaces in Israel's capital. But once you notice it, it's hard to fathom how you didn't pay attention to this fact earlier. It appears that in recent years, and in an escalated fashion in the past several months, women have disappeared from advertisements in Jerusalem.

This fact does not refer to scantily clad models, who were purged from signs and posters in the city several years ago as a result of campaigns waged by the ultra-Orthodox - struggles that sometimes included the burning and destruction of billboards and bus stops. The purging of women from publicly displayed pictures in Jerusalem applies to images of females in regular dress and daily situations. Pictures of women in family settings and advertisements of women using face cream or being connected to food or fashion products are hard to come by in this city.

Jerusalem municipality officials adamantly deny that there has been a change in the city's advertising policy, and they refer to several advertising campaigns that featured images of women. However, figures in the city's public relations industry admit that women have been entirely removed from public billboards and pictorial advertisements.

There are many examples of this trend. For instance, the safety advertisements for Jerusalem's new light-rail system have featured images of twins, to reinforce the idea of being "doubly safe." Children, teenagers and Haredim have been pictured in this safety campaign, all of them males. Also, the municipality built a lavish sukkah in Safra Square; the colorful, traditional holiday structure featured pictures of males only.

It seems that this trend is being led by private advertisers who prefer to conceal women rather than deal with ultra-Orthodox anger. For instance, a hamburger company that promoted its product around the country with a picture of happy family members choose in Jerusalem to show only images of its burgers. In Jerusalem, a campaign for regional radio stations dropped the image of radio presenter Ofira Asayag, which was featured everywhere else in the country.

According to Vered Levin-Yerushalmi, the owner of a media consulting agency in Jerusalem, this trend is also conspicuous in local Jerusalem newspapers.

"The problem isn't the municipality's," she explains. "This is a trend that has gripped private advertisers. In places where you would have expected to see women or families, advertisers chose to use texts rather than pictures. You don't even see women in housing listings, which have always relied on family motifs - a mother, father and children. In Jerusalem, what you see is a photo of the apartment."

"This becomes a process of self-censorship," explains Rabbi Ayalon. "You decide in advance not to use a photograph of a female dancer, so that nobody sprays it. You decide not to confront anything, and that's the position adopted by the advertisement agencies.

"This is no longer creeping erosion, but rather a trend that's up and running," he adds.

"Everyone is guilty of this sin," says Levin-Yerushalmi. "You say to yourself, 'Who needs this headache?' There are all sorts of simple graphic solutions, so why get yourself stuck in this bind? It's very easy to post an advertisement without women. We, secular people, are guilty: We know that this isn't right, but we've gotten used to it. There's nobody to blame.

"But the bottom line is that women are being ousted, and the impact isn't just visual, because the moment you see fewer women, they become subordinate," she adds. "Think about children who do not see women: Subconsciously, the message is that if you don't see them, they aren't important."

The Jerusalem municipality says that allegations about the elimination of women's images from the city's public spaces are "deluded and unfounded," adding that it "uses women's images in poster announcements in public, and in announcements published in newspapers, and in publications sent to residents."

[Hat Tip: Seymour.]

Comments

[seymour]

in a few years there will be no mention of woman in the Torah they simply will delete them

[Litvish]

If I did not know this was Israel I would have assumed that the location was Saudi Arabia or Iran or Afghanistan or some other Muslim woman-hating shit hole.

So who is in charge here?

Not the majority of Israelis.

Who is intimidating whom?

The secular majority is not working to intimidate the frumiks. It is poonk farkert, they are working to intimidate us, the majority. And they are winning!

When a high government official is threatened with death by residents of the frum world and nothing is done, what need do we have for secular law?

If they try this in America they would be shut down like they are with their sex segregated bus service in Brooklyn.

But this is not America. It is in the Jewish homeland which increasingly is becoming the citadel of crazed, unemployed, horribly ugly, deliberately life-denying maniacs. They spend their days obsessing over the minutiae of customs created hundreds of years ago by superstitious fools, all in the name of hashem.

They produce so many kids that in a few years they will be the majority. They want our taxes to pay for their lifestyle. They want our children to fight to defend them. They want us to change our ways so that they are not offended by people different than them.

And, of course, they are the only real, authentic Jews in the entire world. Only their opinion counts. Everyone else's opinion is treyf and posul.

This is only the beginning.

As they multiply, since they don't follow birth control and don't care about the expenses that having tons of kids will entail, they will soon vote themselves into power as the majority.

That will be the end of Israel as we knew it.

Forget the Arabs.

We now know who our REAL enemy is.

Not a single frumik has done anything to advance civilization. Not one of them. Einstein, Freud, and all the other great Jewish creative minds who have contributed so much abhorred these scum.

But, of course, as far as the frumiks are concerned, only they have the truth, only their "Torah-true" g'dolim, all men, almost all uneducated in the sciences and collective knowledge of our world, are the ones who know.

The rest of us are bums, as my yeshivo used to call us.

Arise, O, Yisroel, and realize who your real enemy is.

It is the pathetic creatures who mock modern life, the frumiks of the world, the deluded and the lost who demand that the rest of us protect, care for and respect them as the true Guardians of Israel.

[Shlomo]

Obviously we cannot learn Tanach for instance the song of Devorah and how Yael (a married women killed Sisera by sexually luring him to his death.
Is the Artscroll Tanach illustrated? I'd like to see how they chose to show this famous event in Jewish history

[Shlomo]

What's these talibans obsession with putting down women?

[Korbendallas72]

Litvish - Well said. Thank you.

It's just sad that nobody will do anything about it. Someone or something needs to put the fear of God into them. The real God, I mean... not human collectivist power-gods that effectively function as practical intermediaries.

[Alter Kocker]

These damn neanderthals that contribute nothing to Israeli society but demand servitude from the secular majority. They don't work, they don't serve in the army, they don't pay taxes. The only currency they have is their vote. Here is a people that are afraid that the sight of a woman will produce such a prodigious erection that they will be unable to focus on their coffee and cigarettes that are graciously paid for by the secular taxpayer. Where are the secular voices. Are they drowned out by the harangues of these smelly bearded lazy sons-of-bitches. Why are they sitting on their hands as the ignorant and lazy minority runs roughshod over rights and liberties. When will secular Israel wake up and demand that the government stop pandering to these religious whores.

[Moish the spacedout BT]

A possible solution-- have "flash mobs" of women gathering out of nowhere and dancing in the streets of J'lem. Have YouTube pick it up until it goes viral and gets posted everywhere

[Adam Neira]

It is true that some billboards present overly sexualised images of women, but a complete banning of images of women and children may be going a bit far. Golden mean anyone ? Better yet, let's have less outdoor advertising not more. A constant bombardment of images can be tiring. Should Jerusalem look like a scene out of Bladerunner or Barry Lyndon ?

[Dovy]

Well said, Adam, as usual.

[jvliv]

Just my .02c and trying to correlate one thing with another, but maybe if these Haredi folks would allow more women pictorial display and more interaction with women the way any modern person does it might reduce the incidence of pedophilia (as reported so many times in this blog)among their community. Think about the levels of sexual repression and frustration in these folks.

[Adam Neira]

To Dovy,

The cheque's in the mail...

(:

[Rebitzman]

It seems to me that advertising is cost/benefit driven, and that the cost here exceeds the benefit. I can think of several Orthodox Xtian communities around the country where the standards of the right influence what is and is not "acceptable" to be shwn in advertising. Granted, the Baptists do not (as a rule) chunk stones and threaten violence, but Jerusalem ain't Tel Aviv, and while the threats certainly are beyond the line, in the eyes of a religious community, I can see where many of the print and billboard ads that I am currently looking at out my hotel window may well be problematic to those who view immodesty as an issue.

This one isn't so black and white to me for some reason.