Billionaire’s daughter pays ‘influencers’ to tout Jewish menstruation laws
Lev Leviev’s daughter Ruthy paid some NIS 150,000 to get secular female social media stars to promote Jewish purity rules, celebrity news journalist Guy Pines reports
The daughter of a Russian billionaire diamond merchant paid secular Israeli female social media stars tens of thousands of shekels each to promote Jewish ritual purity laws that relate to menstruation, veteran celebrity news journalist Guy Pines reported Tuesday.
The Channel 12 reporter said he began investigating the story after seeing a video clip on social media of a secular former reality television star, Shay Mika, telling celebrity interviewer Yael Bar-Zohar about her struggles to abide by the Jewish laws of nida, which determine when a woman is considered ritually impure due to her period and is therefore not meant to touch her husband, among other things.
“For the first time, this month I was nida. It was really hard for [my husband] Maor, so yesterday he told me on the couch, ‘This is the last time that you are keeping nida,'” Mika said in the video.
When Pines looked into this strangely personal video about Mika and her husband’s sex life, he found that it was part of a campaign sponsored by Ruthy Leviev, the daughter of diamond magnate and investor Lev Leviev. It is part of a wider effort by the younger Leviev known as “She’asani Isha,” meaning “that [God] made me a women,” a reference to a blessing in the Orthodox prayer book to be said by Jewish women each morning. This campaign claims that adopting traditional Jewish values and practices strengthens romantic relationships.
According to Pines, Mika, who won the “Big Brother” reality show in 2015, was paid between NIS 15,000 ($4,350) and NIS 20,000 ($5,800) for appearing in the clip and for posting about it on her Instagram account. Bar-Zohar, who interviewed a number of women for the campaign, was paid between NIS 40,000 ($11,600) and NIS 50,000 ($14,500), as was another participant, television personality and food writer Michal Ansky, who also posted about it on Instagram.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/billionaires-daughter-pays-influencers-to-tout-jewish-menstruation-laws/