After being criticized in previous years for blurring out the faces of little girls in toy store Purim costume ads for "modesty reasons” normative halakha would seem to reject, this year some toy stores owned by or catering to haredim decided to completely remove all girls and women from their ads.
Haredim ‘Ban' Queen Esther
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
After being criticized in previous years for blurring out the faces of little girls in toy store Purim costume ads for "modesty reasons” normative halakha would seem to reject, this year some toy stores owned by or catering to haredim decided to completely remove all girls and women from their ads, Ynet reported.
Ads showed plenty of costumes modeled by little boys, but there were no costumes shown for little girls – no costumes of the biblical matriarch Rachel or even of the Purim holiday’s hero, Queen Esther. The girls’ costumes were still on sale in the stores, but they were not advertised in order to comport with ever-tightening haredi modesty regulations.
Here a pictures of an ad for haredi Purim costumes from a previous year followed by its male-only version this year:
Zionist Orthodox rabbis associated with the Ne'emanei Torah Va'Avodah movement reportedly tried to take a middle road, criticizing the extreme interpretation of Orthodox modesty laws on one hand and the racy girls' costumes found in some secular areas of Israel.
"It appears that there are those who prefer to read only the parts related to Ahasuerus' feasts in the Book of Esther, while on the other hand there are those who completely hide Esther. The despicable treatment of women, on both sides, strengthens extremism and creates a public domain which ranges between over-conservatism and over-permissiveness. The public is responsible for designing a road in the middle, which respects human beings and does not see them as an object," the movement reportedly said in a statement.
Related Post: Modesty? Haredi Ad For Kids Purim Costumes Blots Out Faces Of Little Girls.