Gypsy, over half of the Jewish population of Israel are of North African and Middle Eastern origin, many having lived in the region for over 3000 years, the term generally used to describe this group is "Sephardi", if you go to a Sephardi synagogue you will hear quarter tones in the music and tunes (music written in the middle east), the older generation of middle eastern Jews spoke Judeo Arabic (written in Hebrew characters), wrote many texts in it that are still referenced today. And if you look at any Jewish party in Israel playing Mizrachi (that means eastern) music, the sephardi girls do what you would describe as shaabi. There are those however who forget this fact, and are generally idiots. There is no law written that says you can't dance or have fun.
nicknack,
Israel is in the heart of an Arab/Middle Eastern region, of course there will be Middle Eastern people living in that area who brought their heritage and tradition with them. This isn't related to the original topic and your response about "jewish culture" and sephardi jewish "belly dancing". In the Arab world we say that anything Middle Eastern or from neighbouring eastern countries is sharqi, eastern. We are an eastern society, whether our community is made up of jews, muslims or christians, and this includes all of the different sects.
I don't know where you got that statistic, that over half of the jewish population in Israel is from Middle Eastern origin. Let us assume it is true, this could be due to different reasons, one of them is that more non-Middle Eastern jews are leaving Israel. They are either going back to Europe where they came from or immigrating to somewhere else. I know there is over 4 million palestinians living in Israel, they are muslims and christians who are being forced out of their homes but have got no place to go to since Arab countries have become saturated from taking in refugees. There is also the "Israeli Arabs" these are the few people who got to stay after the formation of Israel in 1948, they are named as such because they hold Israeli passports and since Israel denies there is such thing as palestine, they cannot call them "palestinian arabs". And then there are the Israeli jews from Middle Eastern origin. Now if you bundle up all these groups together you will get a huge population who besides the Middle Eastern roots they have in common, they are also treated like second class citizens. Either way, the jewish population in Israel does not represent "jewish culture" as there are more jews living OUTSIDE Israel, many that are from United States, Russia, UK, France and other western countries. These people do not have any relation with Middle Eastern culture.
I agree with you and I suspect there is no law in the torah saying you can't sing or dance, just like there isn't one soorah in the qura'an that says dancing or singing is haram. but when you ask a religous person, be it a Rabbi, Priest, or Imam if it is ok to dance half naked infront of men, what do you expect that the answer will be? But your response about jewish law is changing topic because this isn't what I was refering to when I quoted the Rabbi. I was refering to the Rabbi's halachic ruling that belly dancing is forbidden because it comes from cheap and defective cultures, your first response is a contradiction of what he is saying.
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