Where are the … waitresses? Not at one popular Jerusalem eatery, at least not on Thursday evenings. That’s apparently when yeshiva boys descend on Heimische Essen to get their fill of kugel and kishka. In an effort to secure the über-strict Badatz kosher certification, Heimische Essen has agreed to employ an all-male wait staff on that night.
In related news, a teenager from Dimona, deep in Israel’s Negev desert, was expelled from her religious school for working at a fast food restaurant. The franchise was kosher, but the job required her to work alongside men, an apparent violation of her high school’s modesty code.
Nose jobs, and tired, old “shiksa goddess” stereotypes get the punk-rock treatment, courtesy of the Miami plastic surgeon Michael Salzhauer. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons is investigating the self-billed “Dr. Schnoz” for his new music video about a yarmulke-clad “beak like Jewcan Sam” keeps him from winning over the girl of his dreams. The music is courtesy of the Jewish punk band The Groggers.
Forget the Aspirin: Three years after winning FDA approval, the second-generation female condom has arrived in the Jewish state.
Are the practice of forcing young girls to walk around draped in black sheets, denying them formal education and coercing them into early marriage the markings of a cult? Should such communities that do these things be illegal, and should girls whose parents join such a community be removed from their custody?
Israelis are now waiting to hear a Jerusalem family court’s decision on the matter. The ruling is expected to come next week, when the court must determine the fate of two girls whose parents joined the Israeli branch of a Haredi sect called Lev Tahor (Pure Heart). Israelis have taken to calling the group part of the “Jewish Taliban” trend, because women and girls in the group have adopted the custom of wearing burkalike veils covering their faces, and multiple layers of clothing on their bodies.
The girls in the midst of the firestorm, ages 13 and 15, are the daughters of two secular Israelis who became ultra-Orthodox and joined the sect. Their grandmother and great-uncle, concerned for the girls’ well-being, petitioned the court after the girls’ parents put them on a plane headed to Canada, to an isolated village outside Montreal that comprises 45 families from Lev Tahor.
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