ISRAEL: Ultra-Orthodox musical about HDTV? Uh-oh...

Israeli advertising humor takes (ir)reverence one step forward, then two back: The Village People. YMCA. Dancing ultra-Orthodox Jews. What's wrong with this picture? Uh, lots.

Earlier this month, Yes, the Israeli satellite TV company, launched a new feature: HDTV, high definition television. Basically, this is state-of-the-art technology that allows digital production, transmittal and reception at the highest resolution and best quality available and is supposed to be the cat's meow.

But who cares about the technology? What people are really talking about is the TV commercial.

The campaign opened with a humorous musical-style commercial showing a rabbi warning his ultra-Orthodox disciples that HDTV is sinful, urging them to go forth and protest the abomination. The pious men proceed to rush out en masse and lament this great-quality-depravity in a mish-mash of English, Hebrew and Yiddish, dancing in the streets to the tune of the Village People's "YMCA."

The humor was not appreciated by many religious and ultra-Orthodox Jews. While secular Israelis were laughing till it hurt, religious Israelis went to work, distributing fax numbers for the appropriate TV authorities and ombudsmen for people to register their protest.

Ultra-Orthodox journalist Yossi Elituv sent a sharp letter of protest to Israel's Second Authority for Broadcasting and Radio (of which he is a board member). "I support freedom of expression and humor, but this commercial carries an Hitlerian aroma," wrote Elituv, explaining that what irked him was not the stereotypical Jewish image but the notion that they are a mindless mass, easily incited to violence. "We are treated like the Jews were in the 1930s. When I closed my eyes, I could hear Hitler," he wrote. 

Others criticized the commercial for reflecting secular Israeli arrogance, or being a joke between trendy advertising agencies and potential up-market customers at the expense of Israel's pious Jews, many of whom do not have televisions in their homes anyway. 

Advertising in Israel often falls into stereotypical typecasting, using women to advertise cleaning products, Arabs to advertise hummus and sex to advertise pretty much everything else. Previous Yes commercials have also been provocative and humorous; an ad from 2005 featured American prisoners singing the praises of the company's Dolby feature while being tortured in what is presumably Vietnam. Naturally, Vietnam veterans carry less clout in Israel.

Back-and-forth posts on Israeli websites were prolific as usual: "lighten up, take a joke!" "I'd like to see you try this on non-Jewish minorities" and "This is an anti-Semitic disgrace."

One week after it went on-air, Yes agreed to requests to pull the ad, although they insisted they had "not intended to hurting anyone's feelings."

It's doubtful whether the shock value was worth it. Most people still don't know what HDTV is, but it doesn't matter. They're not watching TV these days anyway — they're too busy watching the banned commercial, below, and trying to figure out how to set it as their ringtone.

— Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem