Not kosher enough?

'Michael Jackson-style music has no place in our community' - Mordechai Bloi, a senior member of the Guardians of Sanctity and Education

By MATTHEW WAGNER, DAVID BRINN
Is the religious world wide enough to encompass pop music? Not if you're Mordechai Bloi, a senior member of the Guardians of Sanctity and Education (Mishmeret Hakodesh V'hahinuch), an organization based in Bnei Brak that enforces what it sees as normative haredi behavior. "Michael Jackson-style music has no place in our community," says Bloi, who, together with his colleagues, is compiling a detailed list of guidelines drafted with rabbinical backing that differentiates between "kosher" and "treif" music. Under the guidelines, musicians like Gad Elbaz who use rock, rap, reggae and trance influences will not receive rabbinic approval for their CDs, nor will they be allowed to play in wedding halls under haredi kosher food supervision. The guidelines will also ban "2-4 beats and other rock and disco beats"; the "improper" use of electric bass, guitars and saxophones; and singing words from holy sources in a disrespectful, frivolous manner. According to Bloi, the banned forms of music "lower the spiritual level of our youth... Respectable people listen to decent music and immoral people list to indecent music, and it does not make sense that a community that has high moral standards should be listening to this type of music." Elbaz says he will never change the style of music he plays, even if it means that certain haredim would refuse to play his music or invite him to perform at their functions. According to Yoav Dilion, the music programmer for Radio Kol Chai, the country's only sanctioned radio stationed for the religious public, the choice of what to play is his and his alone. "There's never been any pressure from any rabbinical or other source not to play Gad's music, or anyone else with such a positive spiritual message," he says. Shlomi Cohen, Elbaz's manager, makes a point of requesting that Elbaz be identified by the media as a "Jewish" singer and not a "haredi" singer. "Gad's not haredi, and neither is his music," he says.