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Monday, February 13, 2012

The Kosher Camera

Now available: a camera that automatically replaces the image of a woman’s face with a brown paper bag. You need not fear that immodest images will appear in your digital photographs. This amazing camera’s built-in facial recognition software analyzes a scene and detects all the faces of women within the frame. The final result is a distorted pixilated face, an obtrusive black bar, or the much-preferred brown paper bag, guaranteed not to arouse you in any way.

The reason that this newly launched Kosher Camera website is so hilarious is because it is a humorous response to a very real and serious problem in Israel.

Buses and billboards in Jerusalem are just one of the battlefields between the ultra-Orthodox extremists and the modern State of Israel. Many advertisers refrain from posting images of women to avoid vandalism.

"Jerusalem is a symbol, a capital, built on mutual respect, holy to Jews, Christians and Muslims. If you want to be tolerant in this city you cannot advertize women," stated Nissim Hasson, vice president of sales at the Zohar Hutzot advertising company, as quoted by Ynet.

As reported in the Jewish Chronicle, “Israeli fashion chain Honigman cut out the head of the model on its Jerusalem posters; model Gal Gadot's whole upper body disappeared from Castro's latest campaign, though it can be found on adverts outside Jerusalem; and Fox left Bar Refaeli out entirely.”

In November, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat ordered the police to crack down on the growing phenomenon of vandalism of posters depicting women. “We must make sure that those who want to advertise [with] women's images in the city can do so without fear of vandalism and defacement of billboards or buses showing women," Barkat wrote to Jerusalem District Police Commander Niso Shaham, Haaretz reported.

The Kosher Camera is a comic solution to the problem, and the unnamed creators of that website developed it very professionally. “Imagine how holy your pictures will be,” the site invites you, stating that “the sophisticated camera’s circuitry and algorithms can detect the presence of a female and automatically obscure her face with a suitable covering.”

The Kosher Camera will also detect and cover the faces of female canines, and can even determine the gender of fetuses in the womb, making sure that the face of your unborn daughter will be obscured in ultrasound imagery.

Want to order the Kosher Camera? Click “Order Now” for the appropriate end to this holy photography experience.

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