Thumbing through this month’s issue of Conde Nast Traveler, I stopped upon a two-page spread advertising Israel. The ad features a lithe female in a tube top stretching her body in a dancer’s pose on the beach in Tel Aviv, sleek hotels and condos in the background. “You’ll love Israel from the first ‘Shalom,’” the text proclaims.
The ad is part of a new campaign by the Israel Tourism Ministry to attract visitors to the country by showcasing its people; other versions feature a cowboy on the Golan Heights, a chef in Jerusalem, and an archaeologist atop Masada. So Israel stands for culture, history, adventure, technology. But Judaism? None of the prototypes showcases Israel as the Jewish State or the Holy Land.
If that weren’t troubling enough, the Israeli government recently co-sponsored an event with the men’s magazine Maxim—an unabashedly sex-obsessed publication—to celebrate Maxim’s feature on “Women of the Israeli Defense Forces.” The invitation to this event featured Miss Israel 2004 in a spread that would look right at home in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue.
- https://PayPal.Me/lukeisback
"Luke Ford reports all of the 'juicy' quotes, and has been doing it for years." (Marc B. Shapiro)
"This guy knows all the gossip, the ins and outs, the lashon hara of the Orthodox world. He’s an [expert] in... all the inner workings of the Orthodox world." (Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff)"This generation's Hillel." (Nathan Cofnas)