Secular and religious clash over charity concert
The furor over the charity concert for the Ezra LeMarpe medical support organization has resulted in another societal rupture over the place of religion in the public domain.
The concert was supposed to have raised money for the NGO, which has been widely praised for its work with people across Israel, but was canceled by Ezra LeMarpe’s director Rabbi Avraham Elimelech Firer after coming under pressure due to his request that women not sing at the concert.
Jewish law prohibits men from listening to women sing, especially at live performances, and Firer, who is from the ultra-Orthodox community, requested that no women sing at the event so that he could attend.
Several performers canceled their participation when this condition became public, while the celebrated musician Shlomo Artzi whose work was to have been honored at the event said he tried to change Firer’s mind on the issue.
The cancellation, announced Monday, generated intense criticism from religious-Zionist and ultra-Orthodox public figures, who claimed that the pressure on Firer was “liberal terror” and constituted an intolerant attitude by secular Israeli society toward a different lifestyle and values system, namely a religious one.
Benny Rabinowitz, a prominent ultra-Orthodox journalist and commentator, is one such figure.
He said that event was organized by a “private organization doing charitable work for the general public,” and that the pressure against the concert had been unreasonable and unjust.
“Anyone who didn’t want to come to a concert without women singing didn’t have to. No one was forced to come,” opined Rabinowitz.
“There were people who wanted to make a fuss out of this issue, and use it for propaganda purposes. It has been taken by the ultra-Orthodox community as spiteful and an attempt to show the ultra-Orthodox who is in charge,” he continued.
Rabinowitz also pointed out that there were women among the various bands and orchestras scheduled to perform, while the host of the event was also a woman and there was no gender separation in the audience.
“These people would respect other cultural demands if it were from Christians or Muslims, and they could have respected the ultra-Orthodox. If there are events like these once in a while, nothing bad would happen.”
Attorney Michal Gera Margaliot, the director of the Israel Women’s Network which was involved in the campaign against the concert, sees the matter differently.
She points out that her organization did not try and cancel the event, as it has with publicly funded events in the public domain, but instead asked the musical artists who were scheduled to perform to reconsider due to the exclusion of women from the event.
In addition, the organization called on President Reuven Rivlin, who was set to attend the concert, not to do so.
Gera Margaliot said that at issue was whether or not “group segregation” is acceptable in Israel, regardless of which group is being excluded.
“You can’t have events where only Jews can perform, or only Ashkenazim, and you can’t have performances where only men can perform and not women,” she told The Jerusalem Post.
“Would we accept an event in the US if Jews were not allowed to perform?” she asked.
Gera Margaliot also rejected the idea that the concert was a private event, pointing out that the general public was invited and that it was therefore not akin to a wedding where only private guests are invited.
She added that her organization would have had less of a problem with the event if there had not been so many male performers invited since no one would have actually noticed, and that the best option would have been to have a female singer and for Firer to have left during her performance.
But she also objected in principle to the religious prohibition on listening to women sing.
“This is a perspective that humiliates women, shows them to be no more than sexual objects and not a person, and pushes them out, and this is destructive to women in the public domain,” said Gera Margaliot.
“I don’t argue with Rabbi Firer’s lifestyle if this is his personal position, and we acknowledge the great work he does saving lives, but it was important that there was a strong public protests against the exclusion of women.”