A handful of protesters rallied Sunday night in opposition to a efficiency by brazenly homosexual singer Eden Hasson, organized by a West Financial institution regional council for later this week.
Forward of the protest, Hasson denounced the spiritual opposition to his efficiency — a part of an end-of-summer pageant organized by the Binyamin Regional Council set for Tuesday on the Sultan’s Pool amphitheater in Jerusalem — stating: “This isn’t the faith I do know.”
In July, the Committee for Binyamin Rabbis — led by Rabbi Yigal Levinstein, who is understood for homophobic views — launched a letter stating that “the selection by the council of one of many finish of summer time performers was not proper, and is liable to normalize a phenomenon that contradicts the values of the sanctity of Israel and the household unit.”
The rabbis known as on residents to protest in entrance of the council headquarters on Sunday night, but just a few greater than 10 folks confirmed up, in accordance with a picture posted on social media.
In a prolonged submit on Instagram, which garnered over 10,000 likes, Hasson wrote, “A handful of extremists have been working and attempting for some time in some ways to stop me from performing. Not as a result of I damage somebody, or as a result of I did one thing unhealthy, however just because I’m totally different from them.”
“They argue that my efficiency harms the Jewish spirit of the nation of Israel. And I ask, what a part of me as an artist or my efficiency harms the Jewish spirit?” he wrote.
שבעה (!) אנשים היו בהפגנה המכוערת נגד ההופעה של עדן חסון. תראו את התמונה: שבעה מפגינים ועשרות כותרות.
מול זה יהיו בהופעה שלו השבוע אלפי מתיישבים שיצביעו ברגליים ויבואו לשמוע את עדן חסון.
אחלה עדן. לראות את הטוב???? pic.twitter.com/wnX0IUm7EY— יאיר שרקי (@yaircherki) August 24, 2025
Hasson went on to quote parts of his efficiency wherein he sings Jewish spiritual phrases alongside “troopers, ultra-Orthodox, volunteers, and reservists.”
“I wrote the track, ‘Rising a bit of beard,’ about precisely these sorts of people that need to boycott me due to who I’m,” he wrote.
“They cost that they’re talking within the title of faith. My total life I grew up in spiritual and even ultra-Orthodox settings. I used to be a child with a black kippa and peyot behind my ears. Three prayers a day and a Torah lesson between [the prayers of] Mincha and Maariv. This isn’t the faith I do know,” he mentioned.
“And actually, I don’t need to participate on this divisive recreation. Our individuals are already torn other than inside. I need to give attention to unconditional love, on ‘love your neighbor as your self.’ Due to this fact, on Tuesday, with God’s assist, the efficiency will happen. I’ll include the perfect power to carry folks collectively and unconditional love that binds your entire folks of Israel collectively,” he wrote.
A number of Israeli celebrities got here to Hasson’s protection, together with TV persona Assi Azar, who can be brazenly homosexual and wrote on Instagram: “Whoever desires to protest in opposition to this pure-hearted songbird is just not observant, not spiritual, and doesn’t actually imagine in God. He’s only a idiot and an fool.”
Singer Nasreen Kadri wrote on her Instagram: “To surrender the possibility to be at a efficiency of a singer like him due to his love life and private decisions, which don’t hurt anybody and solely make him completely happy, is a disgrace on us as a society. It saddens and pains me. We’re within the yr 2025. Recover from it already.”
When approached by Hebrew media shops, the Binyamin Regional Council requested to not touch upon the matter.
Hasson, a Mizrachi pop singer who grew up in a spiritual household, revealed in a track posted on his Instagram that he was homosexual in November 2024.
