Women-Only London Film Screening for Ultra-Orthodox Scrapped
An all woman’s screening at a London JCC of an Israeli movie by a haredi Orthodox film-maker was cancelled after a complaint to the country’s the Equalities and Human Rights Commission.
“Gift of Fire” directed by Rechy Elias, was scheduled to be shown as part of the Israeli Film and Television Festival, Seret 2015. A screening scheduled for a movie theater, the Odeon in Swiss Cottage, was previously cancelled after the theater said it would not enforce excluding men from the show.
The north west London Jewish community center, JW3, said in a statement released to local media that it cancelled the screening upon legal advice that said a women-only screening would be in violation of the country’s equality laws.
“It’s regrettable that we will no longer be able to screen the film by Rechy Elias, a female film director from the Haredi community,” read the statement, in part. “Elias made “Gift of Fire” with the explicit intention of it only being shown to female audiences; without that condition, she would never have made the film. We had hoped to able to provide this rare platform for a Haredi female film maker to express herself artistically, as well as a ‘safe’ environment for Jewish women from across the entire spectrum of the community to see this unique film.”
The one complaint to the Equalities Commission was from a man, who told the London-based Jewish Chronicle that he “very much regretted the outcome,” and would have welcomed the compromise of two screenings, one for women and one for men.
The “Gift of Fire” tells the story of a young religious Jewish woman living under a false identity after fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in the 15th century, and shows women singing and dancing. It has only previously been shown in Israeli community centers, according to the daily newspaper The Guardian.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
