A February 2007 article by Jacob Berkman of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency begins with the odd fact that "Hillary Clinton could be America's next president, but her picture will never appear on the pages of the country's only Jewish daily newspaper."
Hamodia, as a matter of editorial board policy, refuses to publish photographs of women since it considers the female body to be immodest. In that same article, Menachem Lubinsky, the marketing consultant for the newspaper, explained that this modesty policy is in the strictest interpretation of Jewish law. The newspaper's publisher -- a woman -- refused to speak with Berkman for modesty reasons.
Hamodia, which has been publishing papers since 1910, has never published a photo of Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir or Queen Elizabeth or Madeleine Albright or Hillary Clinton.
Most likely, ultra-Orthodox Jewish newspapers like Hamodia could have continued to follow this policy of refusing to publish photos of women under the radar had one newspaper not made the recent decision to use Photoshop to alter an official photo released by the White House.
Brooklyn's Hasidic Jewish paper Der Zeitung (sometimes spelled Der Tzitung) has the same policy as Hamodia when it comes to publishing photos of women. Der Zeitung could have published a photo that didn't include women in its coverage of last week's capture of Osama bin Laden. Instead it published the iconic photo released by the White House press department of President Obama, Vice President Biden, and members of the National Security team huddled around a monitor receiving a briefing on the raid of bin Laden's Pakistan compound.
The photo contained a strict warning from the White House forbidding the photograph from being manipulated in any way, but the Hasidic paper chose to airbrush Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason, the director for counter-terrorism, from the photo. By altering the photo in this manner, the paper may have upheld its self-imposed ban on females in the pages of its publication, but it also manipulated history. For its readership, it wrote two prominent women out of history in a deceitful way. These two women were not dressed immodestly and there was nothing sexually suggestive in the photo. This is just another example of ultra-Orthodox Jews erecting unnecessary "fences" around Jewish law to protect its adherents from falling victim to the moral stumbling blocks of modernity.
This publication has the freedom of the press to determine what to include and exclude from its pages. However, altering photographs in this manner is in violation of Jewish law -- it is a misrepresentation of the truth. No matter what rationale these Haredi publications use to explain their policy of hiding photos of women from their readers, they must own up to this travesty.
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Who are you to decide that they are unnecessary? What happened to respecting the beliefs of others even if you disagree with them?
Rabbi Jason Miller is that religion's observer and clearly a highly informed one. He can make comments about this own religion if he disagrees with something.
This is how religions grow and develop.
Well that is your interpretation of it, so you think that it falls within the category of a belief that doesn't merit respect.
I don;t entirely agree, but regardless, I think you should keep in mind that this is voluntary. A woman doesn't have to be chasidic. If she feels that she is being treated unfairly, she can join a movement that has more progressive views on women.
If these are customs of the community and are accepted by the community and aren't really bothering anyone outside the community, I don't really see what the problem is.
(This is a small newspaper that serves a very small community.)
But I appreciate your politeness. :)
If that is true, then there is great irony in the fact that Hamodia's publisher is a woman, as noted in the article's second paragraph. What can one make of such a contradiction?! What do THEY make of their own apparent contradiction?! How does such obvious thoughtlessness exist?
Yank in France Commented 19 hours ago
"Thank you for the article, Rabbi, which is very interesting,
but I cannot get worked up about this case, because this
particular Hassidic sect represents a fairly tiny percentage of
the Jewish population and and even tinier percentage of the
overall US population.
They have their peculiar views
but do not appear to be hurting anyone, perhaps a bit like the
Amish.
Frankly, I think there are bigger political fish
to fry than this group, and it is just TOO EASY to stomp on
these folk, who represent only a threat to themselves."
It is so ridiculous that everybody hates lawyers but at the smallest disagreement people want to pursue legal actions.
Some nonsense.
Rather then see this as a (poor) editorial decision by an obscure newspaper it has been allowed to warp into a cudgel to attack Judaism as being sexist on par with Islam, and by extension an attack on Jews/Israel from anti-Semitic quarters.Thanks Rabbi, you've won your talking point on the HufPo.