Musicians Asked to Remove Kippahs and Tzitsis at King David Hotel

The King David Hotel in Yerushalayim demanded that Jewish musicians invited to play for a mostly Arab audience of hotel employees remove their kippahs and tzitsis, according to a report on Army Radio.

About a half-hour before the show, the producers told the band that their religious garb was unacceptable “because it will hurt the feelings of our Arab workers.”

The band’s director, secular Israeli Noam Cohen, refused to tell his musicians to remove their kippahs, but offered to have them wear baseball caps as a compromise.

But that did not satisfy the hotel, either.

Audio of a conversation Army Radio received between the hotel manager and the band manager reveals the former indicating he was “disappointed” that the band was not an Arab band, claiming that the band manager arranged this deliberately as an insult. The band manager angrily denied the claim.