Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Orthodox Blur Faces and Erase First Names of Israel Ministers

Another group of women in powerful positions, another haredi Orthodox paper erasing them. Here we go again.

After each new Israeli government is sworn in, its ministers pose for a group photo with the president. This year’s photo, taken yesterday, features Israel’s three women ministers in the middle row — Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked and Senior Citizens, Minorities and Gender Equality Minister Gila Gamliel.

Regev, Shaked and Gamliel are all smiling. But if you saw the photo on haredi news site B’hadrei Haredim, you wouldn’t know that. Their faces are all blurred out.

A similar obfuscating maneuver allegedly happened at HaModia, a haredi print newspaper. According to a photo posted on a religious feminist Facebook page, HaModia’s list of the new government’s ministers omitted the women ministers’ first names.

So while it listed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Education Minister Naftali Bennett, for example, it noted only Justice Minister Ms. Shaked.

This time, the women weren’t fully erased, as has happened with previous photos of women politicians. A Brooklyn haredi paper, Di Tzeitung, erased then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from the famous 2011 photo of government officials monitoring Osama Bin Laden’s killing. And Israeli haredi paper Hamevaser airbrushed German Chancellor Angela Merkel out of the photo of world leaders marching in Paris following the Charlie Hebdo attack this year.

Hamevaser, by the way, was founded by United Torah Judaism Knesset Member Meir Porush. Porush serves as this government’s deputy education minister — first name and all.

A message from our Publisher & CEO 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.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

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.