Model cause outcry with nude photo overlooking the Western Wall

Marisa Papen from Belgium posed naked recently for a photograph overlooking the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem. Marisa posted the provocative photograph on her website last week, along with others taken by photographer Mathias Lambrecht, during a visit to Israel. In the photograph, Papen leans back on a white plastic chair above a rooftop looking out over the Western Wall and adjoining plaza. "I knew that I wanted to push the boundaries of religion and politics even further," Marisa said in her blog, after referring to an incident in September 2017, when she spent a night in an Egyptian jail after posing naked for photographs at the Luxor archaeological site. "Breaking down the walls that have been build to keep all our wandering souls on this planet somehow under control," she wrote. "With other words, showing my personal religion in a world where freedom is becoming a very luxurious thing." The picture, along with others from the visit to Israel, are on display in the Frank Rose Gallery in Knokke, Belgium, in an exhibit titled "Road to Liberation." Papen said she was on a three-day trip to Israel that included visits to the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. The model wrote that the photo was taken on Israel's 70th Independence Day - apparently snapped around May 14, the anniversary of Israel's founding and the day that the US opened its embassy in Jerusalem. It was also the day after Israel marked Jerusalem Day, which celebrates the reunification of the city after the 1967 Six Day War. The Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which administers the Western Wall prayer area and plaza, told the Yedioth daily that the shoot was a grave incident, while noting that the photograph was taken on "one of the rooftops overlooking the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and not, God forbid, in the Western Wall plaza." Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich said, "This is an embarrassing incident, grave and lamentable, which offends the sanctity of the site and the feelings of those who visit the holy places." Papen said that she did not specifically come to the country with the intention of taking the Western Wall photo, but knew she wanted to make some religious statement that would push the boundaries. The model had visited Israel 5 years ago and said she was impressed with how three religions managed to coexist in Jerusalem's tiny Old City. Papen recalled that the sun was so hot that it made the plastic chair she was sitting on flexible, enabling her to lean far back, at a precarious angle. "It was perfect, like it was made for me to sit on it," she said. She said she did not intend to offend anyone with the picture. "I'm sorry for that," she said. "My intention was to make people see their bodies and the human body in a different way. The human body is a beautiful thing." Photos: Posing infront of the Western Wall, Dome of the Rock, The Dead Sea, and the The Old City rooftop overlooking the Western Wall from which the photo was taken Video: Ynet interview with the nude model (starts at 0:10)

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