Outraged Jews plan to disrupt song contest
By Tom Gross in Jerusalem
ULTRA-ORTHODOX Jews are threatening to disrupt next weekend’s Eurovision Song Contest in Jerusalem because they are furious that last year’s winner, an Israeli transsexual, plans to sing a number that combines the words of a psalm with a Stevie Wonder hit.
Dana International provoked controversy among Israel’s disparate religious groups when she won the 1998 event in Birmingham. The country’s deputy health minister, Rabbi Shlomo Ben Izri, called the singer “a crossbreed”, adding that “even in Sodom there was nothing like it”. Elsewhere, secular politicians praised her “charm and charisma”.
There is renewed anger among Israel’s strict Orthodox Jews because next Saturday evening a scantily clad Dana, accompanied by 50 dancers and a chorus of 80, will fill the break between competitors’ acts and the voting with a version of the psalm Dror vaYikra (Freedom will come).
Its verses, written by a 16th-century Yemeni rabbi and often sung by religious families on the Sabbath, will be intermingled by Dana with the lyrics from Stevie Wonder’s hit Free. Dana, from a Yemeni-Jewish family, was born Yaron Cohen and had a sex-change operation in London five years ago.
Rabbi Haim Miller, Jerusalem’s deputy mayor and a member of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, is also concerned that Friday’s rehearsals might not be over before the Sabbath begins that evening. He said: “It’s not clear to me why we should take the gentiles into consideration rather than the holiness of the Sabbath.”
The contest faces further controversy over the choice of this year’s Israeli entry, performed by a four-man pop band called Eden, which includes two “Black Hebrews” who are not Israeli citizens, and two white Israelis.
The Black Hebrews are an Afro-American group numbering 2,000 who moved illegally to Israel from inner-city Chicago in the early Seventies, claiming to be descendants of one of the lost tribes of Israel. They contend, among other things, that the use of the word “ain’t” by black Americans derives from the Hebrew “ein”, meaning “there is not”.
The Black Hebrews are strictly vegan, eat only raw food for four weeks of the year and practise polygamy. Two members of the band speak fluent Hebrew with Chicago accents. They are Eddie Butler, 26, born in a van on the outskirts of the southern desert city of Beersheba, and his brother Gabriel, 34, who was born in Chicago, but moved to Israel with his family when he was eight. Both now live in mainstream Israeli society.
Eden found success in Tel Aviv’s homosexual club scene. Its lyrics are a mixture of Hebrew and English and the music is a cross between pop and traditional Israeli with a touch of gospel.
Just to add to the scope for controversy and offence to the sensitivities of the ultra-Orthodox Jews, the French entrant is a singer called Nayah, who belongs to the “Ra’el” sect, a group that claims that they, not the Israelis, are the real Jews, and that the Israeli authorities must prepare a place for aliens to land in Israel in 2025. Failing this, they say, Israel will be wiped out.
Nayah was introduced to the sect by her first husband and now lives with its second most important figure. Members all greet each other as Elohim, the sacred Hebrew word for God.
One of the contest’s organisers said yesterday: “I don’t think Rabbi Haim Miller will be too pleased if he finds out about this. Given Jerusalem’s already volatile religious balance, we just hope that Nayah, whose song is entitled I Want to Give My Voice, won’t say anything too controversial on stage during the contest.”
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