No 'Sex' in Jerusalem

Credit: Michael Gottschalk/afp/Getty Images

In chaste Jerusalem, the word ‘sex' is taboo, at least on billboards. Maximedia, an Israeli billboard company, doesn't want to risk the wrath of the city's puritanical ultra-orthodox community, so it has asked that the title of the film “Sex And The City”, based on the TV hit series be changed to: “… And The City”.

Given a choice between ‘… And The City', which sounds like part of a page torn from a telephone directory, and the new Indiana Jones thriller, I know for which one I'd shell out my shekels.
Distributors Forum Films are exasperated. As Arye Barak told Ynet, the internet news service, “The word ‘sex' is part of the movie's title. What exactly are we supposed to do?”

The billboard company claims that the city's haredim would be so incensed that they'd tear down the poster or deface it. The billboards are also being banned in another town, Petah Tiq'vah. It isn't the first time that, bowing to pressure from the ultra-religious community –now 20% of Jerusalem's population and growing-- promoters have toned down their Jerusalem ads. When Black Eyed Peas played in Suleiman's Pools last year, the girl in the group, sex-goddess Fergie, was censored off posters that appeared on the city's buses.

In the mall outside the Time Bureau, a sex shop appeared one day nestled alongside the hair salons and tailors. It's been there for over six months now, a lurid pink display window with mannequins in frilly, silly lingerie, and I've never once seen any one enter or exit the shop. Once I saw a little girl, mesmerized by the pink beaded curtains of the shop, who playfully wandered in. Howling in anguish, her haredi mother, dashed into the sex shop and pulled her out. Whew. Close call.

By Tim McGirk/Jerusalem