For most media outlets a picture of Kim Kardashian, reality television celebrity and wife of rapper Kanye West, would be regarded as guaranteed click bait. Now, however, the woman for whom the word over-exposed might have been invented has found herself crudely excised from ultra-orthodox Jewish website Kikar HaShabbat.
A photograph of Kardashian in a Jerusalem restaurant enjoying a meal with her husband was doctored, with a receipt placed where she was sitting. In a second image she was rendered unrecognisably fuzzy.
Even Kardashian’s name was left out of the piece by the paper, which referred to her only as “Kanye West’s wife”.
The article from which Kardashian was excised had criticised the mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, for dining with the couple at a well-known non-kosher restaurant, Mona, which not only opens on the Jewish sabbath but serves non-kosher dishes mixing meat and dairy, including for the meal in question.
Barkat – the target of the article – had posted a photograph of himself with the couple on his Facebook page, in which he wrote: “Raising a glass to Jerusalem with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West! I asked them to serve as Jerusalem’s ambassadors and spread the word that Jerusalem is an open city and welcomes everyone.”
Nissim Ben Haim, an editor at the Kikar HaShabbat website, said on Wednesday Kardashian had been removed because she clashed with ultra-Orthodox values, not least that women should dress and behave modestly.
Kardashian – who was visiting Jerusalem with West to have her daughter, North, baptised – would certainly not fit with ultra-orthodox views on behavioural mores. She has been photographed naked and has had a sex tape leaked on the internet.
Within the insular ultra-orthodox community, pictures of women are often not shown out of concerns for modesty. In January, an ultra-orthodox newspaper removed German chancellor Angela Merkel from a photo.
