Court warns museum in Jerusalem’s Old City against canceling gay pride event

The Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court orders the city’s Tower of David Museum to reinstate a gay pride event it had canceled upon a rabbi’s request.

Judge Yael Sharon, in a hearing on an appeal by the event’s organizers, orders the municipally-funded museum, which is devoted to the history of Jerusalem, to go ahead with the event tomorrow as canceling it would be an warranted violation of the venue’s contract with the organizers, Ynet reports.

The cancellation earlier this month follows at least one letter of protest sent to Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion by Avigdor Nebenzahl, the rabbi of the Ramban Synagogue, the second oldest active synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, and Eliyahu Medina, another prominent rabbi in the Old city.

“We demand you cancel this display of obscenity,” they write, adding that the organizers “write that King David was a homosexual, may earth cover their months.”

The organizers at Tipulei Harama — a gay rights group whose name is a play on the Hebrew phrase for conversion therapy — release a recording of a museum representative telling them that her institution “received a letter from rabbis, and then we lose a year’s income” and therefore needs to cancel.

“Jerusalem is home to all of us and we don’t give up so quickly,” Tipulei Harama writes on its Facebook page, using feminine pronouns in Hebrew.

An earlier post threatens to “make Jerusalem shake” unless the event is held. “If they are afraid from a happy and festive gay community in Jerusalem, just wait till they meet a furious one,” it reads.

Tipulei Harama thanks Deputy Mayor Yossi Havilio and Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center for their “fast and total mobilization” to make sure the event is held.