Haredi Paper “Sternly” Warned Over Snowman Picture
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
A beit din, religious court, in the haredi town of Beitar Illit summoned a local weekly shopper-newspaper’s editor-publisher to a hearing Sunday after his paper allegedly caused a breech in the community’s modesty standards, Behadrei Haredim reports.
Avraham Walfish’s Friday paper published pictures of Beitar Illit residents enjoying the rare snow that covered the town’s streets last Wednesday and Thursday.
One of those photographs is of Mayor Meir Rubinstein and his family posing next to a snowman.
But it wasn’t this snowman, this ‘graven image’ made of flakes of crystalline water ice that fell from the clouds, that got the paper’s publisher in trouble with the haredi law.
Instead, Walfish was summoned to the beit din of Rabbi David Tzvi Ordntlich because in that picture is a lone woman, bundled up against the cold – the mayor’s wife.
Ordntlich’s beit din reportedly “sternly ordered” Walfish to tighten controls to prevent a similar incident from happening again.
Walfish reportedly refused to comment on the harrowing incident when contacted by Behadrei Haredim, which also could not reach the mayor for comment.
[Hat Tips: Jewish Worker via Shlomo1.]