Turns out that Israeli ultra-orthodox newspapers think picturing women (in this case members of the new Government’s cabinet) is a violation of female modesty (BBC News -Papers alter Israel cabinet photo).

The official and ultra-orthodox cabinet - spot the difference

Quite a bizarre, but effective piece of photo editing.  The Yated Neeman newspaper changed the picture by replacing the women with male colleagues moved from elsewhere in the photo (see picture), while the Shaa Tova newspaper apparently merely blacked them out.  There’s no suggestion in the news report that actually having female cabinet ministers is seen as a problem, merely that depicting them is.  I’m just wondering why they felt they needed to distort the public picture of the cabinet in the first place – one might have expected them to just not use the group photo…

Other tidbits of ultra-orthodoxy I learnt from this article is that staff at those newspapers have to use kosher telephones, the existence of which surprised me a bit, but then again I’m not very knowledgeable about things kosher.  Interestingly, I do share something with these newspapers as I avoid internet content I deem unacceptable, though I suspect our criteria might be different.

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