"The gay, ultra-Orthodox Jewish TikTok star exposed for being a fake"
oh no can't believe it HAHAHAH!
“It’s extremely not ok to co-opt the identity of people who have lived and struggled without making it clear that it’s an act." YEAHH!

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/the-gay-ultra-orthodox-jewish-tiktok-star-exposed-for-being-a-fake-finally-speaks-out/ar-AA1djZzr

The gay, ultra-Orthodox Jewish TikTok star exposed for being a fake finally speaks out

For the last three years, Yaakov Levi has stunned TikTok. His videos were like nothing ever seen on social media, on any platform: a man from the strictly orthodox Haredi Jewish community in Israel also living as an out and proud gay man. He celebrated
his combined, conflicting identities by dancing in rainbow-coloured braces, waving rainbow flags, and twirling a rainbow umbrella, all while in full religious dress — long black coat, white shirt and gartel (a belt made of strings), and a black hat.
Peyos (sidelocks) fell from his temples.

He racked up millions of likes and well over 150,000 followers, as people around the world applauded his bravery. Death threats came too. His family featured in some of the videos: his mum embracing her son for who he was; his sister performing in skits
with him. He lip-synced to pop songs, mocked homophobic and anti-Semitic comments, and took part in Pride parades in Tel Aviv. In one video, he stuffed a Pride flag in Jerusalem’s Western Wall, a sacred site in Judaism. Camp, funny, and impish, he was
living as most LGBTQ Haredi people could only dream of. He was free. Carefree.

Until last month, when a Twitter thread revealed him to be a fake. Yaakov Levi didn’t exist. The man performing in the videos was not Haredi. Yaakov Levi was not his real name. It was all an act. A costume. His TikTok account’s handle might have been
@this.is.kosher but it was anything but. The only real part was that he is gay and Jewish, but from a liberal, secular family — culturally far removed from Haredi Judaism, in which homosexuality is strictly prohibited.

On TikTok, in particular, outrage billowed across the platform, as followers and commentators, particularly Jewish people from a range of backgrounds, accused him of cosplaying orthodoxy; a kind of cultural appropriation; and of pulling off an elaborate,
offensive stunt just for attention — for likes and followers.

Twitter user Schlomo Satt, who spoke out about the Yaakov Levi account, said: “It’s extremely not ok to co-opt the identity of people who have lived and struggled without making it clear that it’s an act. He claims to be a voice for others when all
he’s doing is putting on an outfit, filming a video, then taking it off.” He added, “When I was a Haredi gay kid, I couldn’t just take off my peyos and my black hat. It was a constant struggle and I was reckoning with it 24/7. I’m extremely
upset that he is falsely portraying an experience without the nuance of living it.”

In the attention economy that our digital age has spawned, he had become, to some, its astonishing nadir. With disinformation, deep fakes, and AI shattering trust about what is true or real, his popularity and presence could scarcely have come at a worse
time.

In response to the criticisms, the Yaakov Levi account posted a written apology on TikTok. “I’m sorry if I hurt anyone,” he wrote. Unbeknown to many, however, there was trauma behind the videos that today he describes in detail.

Media from across the world wanted to speak to him, to interview the fake Haredi. When i approached him, it was to understand what was really going on and why he was doing this. It would be easy to assume he was just a cynical or insensitive attention
seeker, but the sheer effort of the operation suggested something deeper.

He chose only to speak to i. He said he felt we actually wanted to hear him, but was there more to it? If this was damage limitation on his part, this raises another dilemma: interviewing someone only increases their platform, and isn’t that what
social media stars want?

We arranged a Zoom call to probe further. He enlisted a friend to translate when his English falters. His real name is Erez Oved. He’s 29 and an actor and comedian, who starred in the 2017 Israeli TV drama Your Honor, among other shows. Raised in
Jerusalem, he grew up around Haredi people, but now lives in Tel Aviv, Israel’s more secular capital, and the most LGBT-friendly city in the Middle East. Does he have any regrets about the Yaakov Levi videos?

“No regrets,” he replies. So why did he do this? Why dress up and pretend to be someone he isn’t?

“First of all, I didn’t want it to look like a ‘character’ because I wanted it to look like someone you can really relate to. And I wanted him to inspire people from the community to maybe come out and feel like they’re not alone,” he says. �
�The fact that he looked real [was] to make people believe that there’s another way or that something like that can happen.”

But the truth is, something like that cannot readily happen. LGBTQ people from Haredi communities can’t simply come out, without consequences. Many are rejected, ostracised, and worse. So why not portray reality? If you’re going to appear like a real
gay Haredi man, why not expose the struggles, the real experiences?

“Because I’m not a journalist, I’m an artist,” he says. “One of the purposes of art is not to show what is really happening. I think one of the purposes of art is to make positive change. And I saw Yaakov as a fantasy, like a dream I can
portray — a utopia. To show a good, supportive family, like I have. The mother [in the videos] is my mother. Our dialogues are not scripted. We are talking and showing how it could be.”

But is it not dangerous to give people false hope? For many in strict religious communities, being out to their families about their sexuality or gender identity could be catastrophic. When i approached Daniel Atwood, the first out gay man from an
orthodox background to become a Rabbi, for his reaction to this story, he said: “Orthodox people saw those videos, including myself, and were hopeful that maybe change is happening. But it was all a charade. A gay Haredi teen in Israel who saw his
videos and was probably so excited – how does he feel now that he knows it’s fake? What happens to that hope? That’s the problem.”

Oved pauses for a while. “I think art can do many things. I cannot take whole responsibility on all the things that are happening,” he adds vaguely, struggling to answer. “I want to focus on the positive things that Yaakov did. I’m getting lots
of messages from people that feel like they can be who they are.”

He says he received a comment recently, as an example, and reads it aloud: “You have to understand, it is impossible to be gay and ultra-orthodox without being abandoned from your family and community. As a religious gay guy who cannot make my voice
heard, your art make[s] me proud and make[s] my heart smile so hard. I appreciate your will and your work.”

Perhaps there is something worse than false hope: hopelessness. “You cannot make any change if you have no hope,” he says. But what happens to that hope when people discover that his videos aren’t real?

Growing up, while still in the closet, Oved met and knew gay Haredi people who were also still closeted. “I saw their struggle really close. And it’s really hard to see what they’re going through. There are people that have no choice. If they say
what I’m saying they would be vanished from their community, from their family. They would have nothing.” Many would argue, however, it is better to find a way to give voice and a platform to real people, rather than creating one for yourself.

Oved adds that it isn’t just queer orthodox Jewish people contacting him, thanking him for inspiring them, but people from other religions. This alone, for him, justifies his reasons for doing it. “Utopia should always be shown so humanity will know
where it should go to.”

It would be easy to accuse Oved of naivety, if nothing else. The idea that hope alone can change the world seems almost adolescent in 2023 without showing how you make a dream concrete. There are, however, other recent precedents for depicting a hate-
free society. The makers of Schitt’s Creek, the multi-Emmy-award-winning Canadian sitcom, deliberately created a world around one of the central characters — David Rose, who was pansexual — without any homophobia. But everyone watching knows it’s
fiction.

Oved says that he never hid who he really was, that his Instagram and Facebook accounts under his name Erez Oved were linked to the Yaakov TikTok account, and that in Israel he is a known actor. But to any casual observer, this was not obvious or clear.
He considers himself an artist, and his work as art, but how were most viewers supposed to know? And what constitutes art?

Regardless, many felt betrayed, misled, and disappointed that someone like Yaakov was not real. Others were simply offended by the use of religious dress as a costume. In search of a deeper understanding of this and a reaction to the Yaakov Levi story, i
approached the Jewish Community Council, a British organisation representing orthodox Jewish communities, but did not receive a response.

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