Lupolianski supported demand for girls to cover hair at bridge

Tag : Ski Hats


The dancers, who ranged in age from 13 to 16, were informed severalhours before Wednesday's event by production organizers that, atthe municipality's instruction, they had to cover their hair andwear long clothing.

The spectacle of the secular girls clad in black ski caps andcloaks on a balmy June evening provoked outrage among theirparents, secular residents of the city, organizers and City Councilopposition leader Nir Barkat, who lambasted the municipality'sdiktat as "extremist" religious coercion.

Pollack defended the demand for the girls to conform to thestandards of haredi residents, and said that all sectors of thepublic had to be allowed to watch the state-run event withoutdiscomfort.

"The religious public is strict about modest clothing, even for13-year-old girls," Pollack said.

Pollack, who had called the dance "promiscuous," said theorganizer's decision to choose black ski caps for the girls - asopposed to colorful or white hats - was a "provocation" to provethat the "we are the Taliban." While religious Jewish women covertheir hair or wear a hat after marriage, unmarried women - andcertainly girls - do not.

The head of the Jerusalem dance group, Shlomi Hoffman noted thatthe troupe - which was also informed an hour before the event thatthey could not perform three of their four planned dances - haddanced in the official state Independence Day ceremony a month agoon Jerusalem's Mount Herzl in virtually the same attire that wasrejected on Wednesday.

"As an Israeli and a Jerusalemite it is very painful to see thisprocess of frightening religious extremism," Hoffman said.

Lupolianski spokesman Gidi Schmerling had said in a terse statementthat Pollack does not speak for the mayor.

He declined all further comment over the weekend.

The move comes against a backdrop of political infighting betweenLupolianski and Pollack over who will be their party's candidate inNovember's mayoral election.

Lupolianski is seen as eager to win the approval of the spiritualleader of UTJ's Lithuanian Degel Hatorah branch, 98-year-old RabbiYosef Shalom Eliashiv, to run again, while Pollack, from UTJ'shassidic Agudat Yisrael wing, is adamant that the mayor keep aparty rotation agreement signed before the last election wherebyanother haredi will be the party's candidate in this year's race.

"It is clear that Lupolianski will not continue serving as mayor,"Pollack said in the interview.

He said the brief statement by the mayor's spokesman about thebridge incident was a blatant attempt to portray the Lupolianski asthe "moderate nice guy" and himself as the "extremist" ahead of theelection.

Despite the NIS 2 million inauguration of the NIS 250m. bridge, itwill remain unused for about two years because of repeated delaysin construction of Jerusalem's light rail system.