Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Ikea Aims To Reach Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox With A Female-Free Catalog

Swedish furniture retailer Ikea has come under fire in Israel after publishing a catalog without women.

Hoping to appeal to the country’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, the catalog released this month shows men and boys in domestic settings — clad in yarmulke and with side curls. They sit at a Sabbath table, in a study and a living room, artfully arrange tableaux plucked straight from everyday life.

But there’s no woman or girl in sight.

An odd look to some, but in ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, circles, it’s common to erase women. Photos of women and girls rarely appear in print. Hillary Clinton, for example, is regularly photoshopped out of Orthodox newspapers.

The catalog sparked anger online.

“Where did the mother go in this picture?” one online commenter asked, according to Times of Israel.

“From the age of three, girls are not allowed in pictures,” another comment read.

Ikea’s retail manager for Israel, Shuky Koblenz, said he regretted the move.

“We realize that people are upset about this and that the publication does not live up to what Ikea stands for and we apologize for this,” Koblenz said in a statement sent to Religion News Service. “We will make sure that future publications will reflect what Ikea stands for and at the same time show respect for Haredi community.”

Haredim make up about 10% of Israel’s total population of about 8.5 million. They buy a lot of furniture as they tend to have large families.

Koblenz said the brochure had been “customized specifically for the Haredi community in an attempt to reach this minority community in Israel with commercial messages.”

Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.