Tel Aviv police investigate woman for offering Chabadnik pork sausage

Police in Tel Aviv summoned a woman for questioning after she waved a ham sandwich in the face of a representative of the Chabad Hasidic movement, who laughed off the offer and told her “no thank you, we love you.” 

Police said that the woman was suspected of “hurting the public’s feelings,” adding that the Chabad representative did not respond to the woman, contrary to what a video on social media, of a jovial interaction between the two, appears to show. The man who was offered the pork also told a Channel 14 interviewer, “To me, it was funny. I wasn’t upset.” 

אישה מנסה לדחוף נקניק חזיר לפה של אדם דתי שהגיע לחלק ציציות לתלמידים שעשו מחאה מחוץ לגימנסיה הרצליה תל אביב לאחר שהמנהל העיף באלימות שליח חב"ד שהגיע להנחת תפילין. pic.twitter.com/iFi1wBxrnm

— ידידיה אפשטיין (@yedidya_epstien) January 10, 2024

The apparently benign interaction came in the context of a more contentious incident at the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium high school in Tel Aviv. A brief video circulated online on Tuesday that shows a Chabad representative inviting a young man, presumably a student at the school, to wrap tefillin, while the school principal, Ze’ev Dagani, obstructs the ritual practice, arguing with the student and the Chabad representative and telling them to perform the practice elsewhere. 

The video prompted outrage, and the following day a demonstration was held in protest, drawing hundreds of people, according to some reports, including a lawmaker from the far-right Otzma Yehudit party, Almog Cohen, after whose arrival a conflict reportedly broke out between protesters and counterprotesters. It was at this protest that the pork sausage incident took place, as the Chabad representative distributed army-green tzitzit-bearing undershirts to protestors. 

Protest site is no stranger to controversy

At the time, Ephraim Kobe, who leads the parents’ association at the school, railed against Cohen’s appearance at the rally, telling outlet Ynet, “We are at war, and this is what MK Cohen chooses to do? Our school has one of the highest draft rates to combat units and [to the IDF] in general, and they want to accuse us of lacking Zionism.” Kobe also said that principal Dagani was merely enforcing the city laws, barring any activity that obstructs the entrance to a school, regardless of its content. 

The Gymnasium is no stranger to conflicts over Israeli society and state. Zionists in Jaffa founded the school in 1905 as the first Hebrew-language high school in the country, shortly before the establishment of Tel Aviv. The school has produced two prime ministers— Moshe Sharett and now-leader of the opposition Yair Lapid— and the current Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai was principal of the school prior to his first election to the office in 1998. 

Dagani, the school’s principal who is seen in the clip shouting at the student and the Chabad representative, made headlines last fall when he refused to cancel an event for students refusing to serve in the IDF, prompting a fight with the board that culminated in Dagani’s resignation, which he then retracted.