Israeli Minister Dismisses Critics Who Panned Jerusalem-Themed Dress At Cannes
Israeli Culture Minister Miri Regev wore a dressed containing an image of Jerusalem at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival. Image by Getty
(JTA) – Israel’s culture minister dismissed criticism over her wearing to the Cannes Film Festival’s opening a dress whose hem features an image of Jerusalem.
“Jerusalem is not a provocation, and it was lovely to see how much affection the dress received at Cannes,” Miri Regev, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rightist Likud party, told Ynet in an interview about the dress.
Nir Hason, Haaretz’s Jerusalem correspondent, said the image of the al-Aqsa mosque on the dress, which also showed the Western Wall, was disrespectful.
“Such disrespect for the most important, prettiest, most complete and most ancient religious structure in the Middle East,” he wrote. “A tremendous shame.”
But Yair Hass, the founder of the Jerusalem-based Halel, a group that supports Orthodox Jews who opt to pursue less observant lifestyles, disagreed.
“She did [it] out of a great respect for Jerusalem,” wrote Hass, who nonetheless said he found Regev’s dress “distasteful, silly and childish.” But “wearing a dress featuring an image of Jerusalem is no different than wearing a shirt with such an image.”
The designer was Aviad Arik Herman, a Sweden-based Israeli, who said he had worked on the dress for six months at Regev’s request and with his mother’s help.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
