Israeli Mag Sexes Up Orthodox-Women Clash

Get ready for the fireworks. An Israeli fashion magazine is adding steamy scenes to the ongoing clashes between women in Israel and ultra-Orthodox Jews who have been harassing them to dress more modestly and move to the back of buses in Israel. In the BelleMode spread, ultra-hot young male models dressed as Haredim lust after women on a bus dressed in sort-of Orthodox female garb (except that at least one skirt and shirt are transparent). The mag is bound to enrage the ultra-Orthodox male community whose influence in Israel is growing as they pressure mainstream Israelis to conform to their religious views.

A magazine editor boasted on a behind-the-scenes video that the spread is "cheeky and provocative," reports Gawker. It's intended to take something "very closed and modest," to "ripped wide open and sexy" with a message "heard through a power of a woman." Gawker translation? If "religious fundamentalists ... try to dictate to us how to live our lives we are going to mock them as much as possible." (More Orthodox Jews stories.)