To present Joseph as a homosexual attracted to Potiphar—is that satire? I’m astonished?!

Why not? You can like it or not, but that’s their goal there. They’re not teaching the Hebrew Bible.

In one of the episodes they make fun of the explicit name of God. As a public, we have to draw the line and not let everyone trample us.
Imagine if they mocked the Holocaust like that—the media would be screaming. Or if they humiliated LGBT people, same thing.
We have to draw the line where none exists.
And in addition, the generation growing up on this sees all the great righteous figures of the nation, spotless and pure, as perverts whose whole purpose is to satisfy their sexual urges.

Also, did you see the media storm recently over the law against conversion therapy? Why are we not capable of fighting for our values too? We have to stop being the state’s punching bag. Humility has its place, and here boldness is what’s needed (that’s what is written in the Mishnah Berurah about heretics).
And Jerusalem was destroyed over humility—because they didn’t decide whether or not to offer a blemished sacrifice.

Their take on Joseph didn’t work.

Satire or mockery—it’s all the same. And there’s no need to elaborate on what the sacred texts say about mockery. It doesn’t matter to me; I’m outside the situation.

I’m not familiar with the matter being discussed, but I think there needs to be one uniform line.

Either it’s permitted to laugh at everything, in which case it’s also permitted to mock state symbols (the flag, the menorah) and its great figures (Herzl).

Or there are red lines, and then the sacred cows of all sectors need to be protected.

Rabbi Michael Abraham, is it also permissible to degrade and humiliate a person on a homosexual family background, or to make a satire of Rabin dancing with Hitler, with Arafat, kissing them and having homosexual relations with them, and of leftists as dogs and pigs—is that also freedom of expression? Because there is no difference at all between that and what they do in Israeli satire to traditional Jews, religious people, Haredim, and others, and on public broadcasting no less.

igal rabin

Why didn’t you suggest a relationship between Yigal Amir and Yitzhak Rabin?

Why is it that in Mea Shearim when they do satire on Haman with IDF uniforms that’s legitimate?
What pains me here is that it’s also not especially successful and everyone has to fund it. Just insane.

Rabbi, could you elaborate: in your view, when do criticism and satire cross the line?
(For example, to criticize obesity, we present fat people in a degrading way. That’s unreasonable behavior, even if it can be done as “innocent satire.”)

I understand that you’re talking about the legal boundary, because as for taste and smell…
Even from the legal perspective, I don’t have a sharp line. Deciding on such a prohibition is made up of three main aspects: 1. The intensity of the harm (which is a subjective matter that’s hard to measure, and therefore of course can be manipulated in order to silence people). 2. Who is the injured party. 3. Whether he has a right not to be harmed (or whether the one causing the harm has a right to do what he’s doing).
You can bring extreme cases of any kind. Someone will come to you and say that a TV show in which people wear pink clothes hurts him, because he has a deep sentimental attachment to the color pink. Do you think that should be prohibited? Not only because I probably don’t believe him that he’s really hurt, but also because I have a right to dress how I want and you need to deal with the hurt. And what about walking down the street in Haredi clothing? Holocaust survivors who are angry at the Holy One, blessed be He, don’t want to see them there. Should that be prohibited?
It should be remembered that here we’re not talking about putting down concrete people who live among us (some would say: people who never lived at all). We’re talking about offending people who are symbols for others. I don’t see a problem with offending symbols, including symbols of the state. It always sounds to me like silencing and shutting mouths. A bit like Muslims who, if you say something about Muhammad, will murder you. I have a right to say whatever I want about Muhammad and about the state.
None of this says anything about the quality of the program or its good taste (I saw two or three clips in the past, and it was really weak). I’m speaking only on the legal plane: should it be prohibited by law?
By the way, everyone here is speaking with absolute confidence about examples like putting down LGBT people or leftists or the Holocaust. There are jokes and jabs about all of those too (including the Holocaust and Memorial Day). Usually people mock the other side, and when the satirists belong to one side of the map you’ll mainly find mockery of the other side. When there is good right-wing satire, it will mock leftists and LGBT people too. There will be protests, just as there are protests now, and everything will be fine. See, for example, alternative memorial days, including for bereaved Palestinian families and the like. There are protests and the caravan moves on, and that’s a good thing.
Mockery of fat people or LGBT people that presents them personally in an offensive way is more problematic. Here there are concrete people living among us who are personally harmed (and not through symbols dear to their hearts). But even here, for it to be prohibited by law, if at all, it would need to be something very unequivocal.
Beyond that, although Shatzal is sure everything is already solved and we’re under LGBT rule, and although I too have written more than once what I think about the terror they use, it can’t be denied that many LGBT people (certainly religious ones, but not only them) are in severe distress, and so much greater sensitivity is required toward them. And toward fat people too. As far as I know, religious people in Israel are not in distress, since there is reasonable freedom of worship and thought here. I don’t buy their cries of distress. So that same freedom also belongs to those who oppose them or just want to mock them. Religious people also shouldn’t engage in parallel terror to LGBT terror and shut the mouth of anyone who writes something they don’t like. Especially since in this country there has been religious coercion for many years (and unfortunately in recent years it has led to a reaction of secular coercion), and now the coercer also wants to forbid people from offending him. Have we become Iran? Are we like Sodom?
And beyond that, there is a difference between the public square and a television program. Not only because the context is satire, which as such has greater freedom, but also because someone who doesn’t want to watch doesn’t have to. It is aimed at those who want to watch. That’s unlike an action done in the street, where everyone passes and the person who is hurt has no advance warning not to go there (and he also has a right to pass there).
Should cooking shows in which they cook non-kosher carcasses and forbidden meat also be banned? I’m sure there are people who are genuinely hurt by that, and I’m also sure that if you open the door to shutting down programs there will be even more people who are “hurt.” And then we really will become Iran.
And in the very end, there is plain common sense. I don’t see here the slightest shred of a problem that even comes close to a dilemma over whether things like this should be prohibited by law. We’re as far from that as east is from west. The very fact that a discussion is being held here on this subject means we’ve lost our sanity, and frustration and the desire to silence people are speaking in place of intellect and reason.

And I haven’t even said anything about the content itself. Presenting a historical figure as gay is not an offense. Certainly not in today’s atmosphere, where that is considered legitimate (they’re in power already, according to Shatzal). Even presenting a concrete person who is alive today as gay is not necessarily an offense—unless in your view “gay” is an insult. Certainly not among the crowd from The Jews Are Coming. It is of course false, and that’s a different discussion. Here I’m talking about the aspect of offense.
In short, I wasn’t dealing here at all with the “offensive” content, which also needs to be discussed.

Rabbi, and if this program causes many people to leave religion, as is known to anyone who talks with teenagers—would your opinion change?

Is one required to tear one’s clothes when hearing them disgrace the explicit name of God?
And is there any practical difference between disgrace of the explicit name in satire and in seriousness?

No Vision,
Definitely not. The state is not an arm of the Jewish religion and is not supposed to provide safeguards against people becoming less religious. In short, if you fear secularization, deal with it.

Dvir,
I don’t think so. Beyond the satire, if you tore your clothes for every disgrace of the Divine Name you hear nowadays, you wouldn’t have many clothes left.

I don’t hear the explicit name of God very often, and especially not in such a disgraceful way, so if this is a clear halakhic ruling I’ll accept it without worrying about the number of shirts I have left (I can use tricks like borrowing a shirt and the like).
My question is: to what does this Jewish law actually apply—that one who hears the blessing/curse of God must tear his clothes (Maimonides, Laws of Mourning 9:6)?

I think today that Jewish law is not relevant. It’s relevant to a religious society that conducts itself in the accepted way. There, if there is such a blatant deviation, one must tear one’s clothes. Certainly in satire it’s not relevant.

There’s a Reform smell rising from your answer above, Rabbi.
What does “not relevant” mean? Why are tefillin relevant, while circumcision suddenly sounds anachronistic?!

Don’t forget to recite the blessing over fragrant spices (that’s what is written in the Shulchan Arukh of the Orthodox).
Do the Orthodox not know the difference between something whose reason is unclear and something whose reason is clear but no longer relevant (or less relevant)? And what about the difference between an act meant to achieve some purpose and an act that is itself a Torah-level commandment?
If the Orthodox are the ones who focus on the sense of smell instead of thinking, then I’m Reform.

“When murderers increased, the ritual of the heifer whose neck is broken was abolished,” and there is room to apply the same process to all other publicity-oriented commandments.

A good example.

No one is required to watch.

Rabbi, where is the line between thinking and Reform?
After all, for almost every commandment or prohibition one can explain a hundred reasons why they aren’t relevant today.

And I’ll ask T: what counts as publicity-oriented commandments? Is treating the Tetragrammaton with contempt okay because it’s a publicity-oriented commandment? Why isn’t circumcision a publicity-oriented commandment? Where did you get that from?

Tam.
What I understand from the Rabbi is that in practice we should have been tearing our clothes much more often—not only upon hearing the Tetragrammaton, but also upon hearing the name God, and more. But through our sins the world is not concerned about this and does not tear its clothes. All that remains for the Rabbi is to do what earlier halakhic decisors did—give a reason why we are not concerned with an explicit Jewish law and tread it underfoot.

Is that to his liking? Reading between the lines, it seems to me not. But all that remains to him is bitter irony.

Indeed, His blessed name is disgraced beyond measure, but the problem is that the prohibition against saying “God” plainly still stands. And even if you say and interpret it differently, there are jokes and then there’s enough already. A taxi driver where every third word is swearing “by God” and “by his mother” is not comparable to people who with lots of thought create mockery of His name and of His existence. Any sensible person understands that we’ve reached the stage of enough is enough!
As Rabbi Michi already wrote, these “Jews” aren’t especially funny, but they definitely are not acting in good faith, and it is simply obvious that if this level of contempt had been shown at the tish of a Hasidic rebbe toward the State of Israel, nobody would be laughing—mostly they’d be furious.

Tam, first explain to me what was unique about the heifer whose neck is broken, that they abolished it (the abolishing of the bitter waters was learned from the prophet). I suggest that the heifer whose neck is broken and protesting desecration are not obligations over something bad that was done, but rather for general strengthening of awareness and so on. And when the whole village is going up in flames, you don’t make regulations to reinforce the fence posts near the neighborhood grocery store. As for the program itself, although I haven’t seen a trace of it and don’t intend to watch it, and personally I’m fairly indifferent to every kind of symbol (at least on the conscious level), I myself think things like this should be blocked (and if necessary the creators should also be boycotted). Public funding for mockery of something very important to a significant group of normal citizens should be given only where there is some reasonable benefit.

In the same Torah in which the matter of the heifer whose neck is broken is written, the matter of obeying the Sages is also written, and therefore they—and only they—can give interpretation to the Torah and uproot something from the Torah when there is a need. If a private person makes a calculation that it is preferable to turn on an air conditioner on the Sabbath in order to fulfill Sabbath enjoyment, even though that seems quite logical and turning on the air conditioner involves no exertion at all, you understand on your own that nothing would be left of the Torah. Everyone would interpret according to his own sharpness what is relevant and what is not, and that is exactly what the Reform do.

In principle it’s no different from any other halakhic reasoning entrusted to the decisors of the generation (or to whoever is qualified, etc.). If a halakhic decisor reaches a conclusion about an air conditioner, then he reaches it and we’ll consider it. The slippery-slope argument has its proper place, but it’s a second-order discussion, as is known, and we’ll discuss it when we come to the bridge (that is, after the first-order discussion is finished). And what about the Hazon Ish’s “one lowers them and does not raise them up”?

When

Taking an exceptional case of “one lowers them and does not raise them up” and building structures on it is not recommended. You have to look at the whole picture and not get stuck on exceptions, because it’s reasonable to assume there is some unknown factor that you don’t know about.

By the way, even in places where there is a great need—for example, with a woman chained to a marriage whose husband died, where the Sages permitted even testimony from a witness who heard from another witness—they annulled the marriage retroactively by the rule that whoever betroths does so subject to the Rabbis, and they did not uproot anything from the Torah, even though there was great need and also great logic in accepting information that a person died, something that in any court would be admissible at second hand.
Look into this: Yevamot 88a; Gittin 33a; Bava Batra 48b; and that’s the only reason they accept testimony from one witness reporting another witness, etc. See also Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 145b in Rashi, s.v. “for testimony of a woman” (today’s Daf Yomi).