JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Israeli singer and songwriter Ishay Ribo says he has turned down more than NIS 1 million ($280,000) in potential earnings after consulting a rabbi about whether to participate in a major concert series featuring both male and female performers.

In a wide-ranging interview published by Ynet, Ribo explained that he was offered a place in the 2025 NEXT Hanukkah tour, one of Israel’s major entertainment productions, featuring leading singers, dancers and a large-scale production aimed at a broad and predominantly young audience.

The production made several accommodations to Ribo’s religious lifestyle, and he said there were many reasons to accept the offer: publicity, exposure, financial rewards and the opportunity to reach a large new audience. Nevertheless, Ribo ultimately decided to consult his rabbi. The rabbi advised him not to participate.

Ribo said the decision was not an obvious one for him. “There were a lot of advantages: publicity, success, recognition, exposure and a budget,” he said. “It also flattered me. On the other hand, I felt that it was crossing a line that I had not crossed until then.”

Why did he turn down the million-shekel offer? Ribo clarified that the issue was not simply that women were present at the event. He acknowledged that he had previously performed on stages where women also appeared.

The problem was the format of the NEXT production: it involved a large ensemble of male and female singers and dancers. Ribo said that he does not sing with female singers and questioned whether he would personally feel comfortable appearing as part of such a production. He also said that he did not want the production to have to fundamentally change its character simply because he was participating.

But his rabbi raised another consideration — Ribo’s responsibility to his religious audience. Ribo explained that many of his fans are from the religious and Haredi communities, where there are stricter standards regarding exposure to women singing and certain forms of entertainment. His rabbi told him that by appearing in such a production, Ribo could inadvertently give his followers the impression that they, too, could legitimately attend or watch entertainment that they would normally avoid.

“He showed me that I also have a responsibility in this,” Ribo said, explaining that the conversation helped him reach a decision he felt completely at peace with.

According to estimates cited by Ynet, giving up the performances meant walking away from more than NIS 1 million, in addition to the considerable publicity and exposure that would have accompanied the shows.

Ribo revealed that he has also declined opportunities to serve as a judge on Israeli reality music programs.

The reason, he said, was his unwillingness to sit in judgment of female singers. His religious standards regarding women’s singing meant that the role would not be compatible with his principles.

The decisions illustrate the unusual position Ribo occupies in Israeli popular culture. He has become one of the country’s most successful mainstream performers while continuing to maintain religious boundaries that affect the venues he performs at, the artists with whom he collaborates and the projects he is willing to accept.

Ribo has made another unusual decision involving his public career: in February 2026, he announced that he was stepping away from social media for 40 days, despite having hundreds of thousands of followers.

The announcement accompanied the release of his song “HaNeshama Lo META” (“The Soul Is Not Meta”), a play on the name of the company behind Facebook and Instagram. Ribo wrote that he had been struggling for a long time with the world of social media and had found himself exposed to material he did not want to see.

He specifically mentioned unwanted news, images, lashon hara and discussions about other people. He described social media as a mechanism that can draw people in and make it difficult to control what enters one’s consciousness.

Israel Hayom reported that Ribo made the announcement to hundreds of thousands of followers, making the decision particularly striking for an artist whose career depends heavily on public exposure.

Ribo did not simply disappear from public life. Rather, he announced a deliberate 40-day hiatus from the platforms while continuing his musical career and performances.

The move also had an earlier precedent. Ribo had previously discussed his complicated relationship with social media and the tension between its usefulness as a promotional tool and the religious concerns surrounding the content that appears on such platforms.

Ribo has built an unusual career at the intersection of Israel’s religious and secular worlds. Born in Marseille, France, he immigrated to Israel as a child and eventually developed into one of the country’s most prominent religious singer-songwriters. His music incorporates Jewish religious texts and themes of faith, prayer and spirituality while being produced in a contemporary Israeli pop style.

His popularity extends far beyond the religious community. He has collaborated with major mainstream Israeli artists and performed for large audiences in Israel and abroad.

In 2023, he became the first Israeli artist to headline a concert at Madison Square Garden, performing before a capacity audience at the iconic New York venue. The event was notable not only for its scale but also because Ribo maintained his Orthodox identity at the center of his public image.

His ability to cross the religious-secular divide has become one of the defining features of his career. Academic and cultural writing about Ribo has similarly noted that he has maintained a substantial audience in both religious and secular communities while preserving boundaries such as not performing with female singers.

In the Ynet interview, Ribo presented his decisions not primarily as sacrifices but as part of his understanding of his religious life and career.

The NIS 1 million offer could have brought him money, exposure and access to a younger mainstream audience. Instead, he chose to follow his rabbi’s advice. His decision to step away from social media similarly came at a cost: those platforms provide artists with direct access to hundreds of thousands of potential listeners and concertgoers.

For Ribo, however, the calculation is different. His career has demonstrated that he can become a mainstream Israeli star without abandoning the religious principles that govern his personal life. The latest decisions suggest that, even as his audience and commercial opportunities continue to grow, he remains unwilling to treat those principles as negotiable.