Haifa municipality removes support from holiday youth event set to feature homophobic rabbi

The Haifa municipality has removed its backing from a youth event tonight at a synagogue in the city that was set to feature Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, who has sparked controversy for his past comments against female soldiers and the LGBTQ community.

The event at the Kiryat Shmuel neighborhood’s central synagogue marks Hoshana Rabbah, the week-long Sukkot holiday’s final day, the eve of which is customarily devoted to all-night Torah study.

An announcement of the event, which listed five speakers including Levinstein, co-leader of the Eli pre-military religious academy in the West Bank, sported the logo of Haifa’s municipal Torah Culture Committee, though the extent of the committee’s involvement was unclear.

After a public pressure campaign by anti-government activists, including members of Rov Ha’Ir (“the city majority”), a Jewish-Arab municipal party, the Haifa municipality has announced that it is pulling its support from the event, which is going ahead regardless.

In a statement, the municipality says it was uninvolved in selecting the speakers and content of the event, and that those were determined by the Kiryat Shmuel religious community.

“Following the controversy that developed around Rabbi Levinstein’s participation and statements, the Haifa municipality has removed its support and all manner of involvement from the event,” says the statement.

The Aguda umbrella organization of Israel’s LGBTQ community lauds the decision, saying “homophobes, chauvinists, and unenlightened people don’t need to be platformed in public institutions.”

Haifa local councilman Yossi Hoenig, head of the city’s Torah Culture Committee, whose inbox was bombarded by Rov Ha’Ir members, tells a local radio station that Levinstein’s participation is worthy, “particularly as the alumni of the Eli pre-military academy have sacrificed their lives so that we can continue living here.”

“There is no reason to scrap his participation on the basis of this or that statement,” he says. “It’s important that we refrain from mutual accusations, and encourage listening and respectful discourse.”

Levinstein sparked controversy in 2017 for saying that gays are “deviants” devoid of “the normalcy of life,” and that military service makes women insane and that “they enter as Jews, but they’re not Jews by the time they leave.”