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The Holy Land's first transgender beauty pageant brought together contestants from Isreal's three main faiths on Friday in an unconventional show of tolerance and coexistence.
Those vying for the Miss Trans Israel 2016 crown included a Jewish confectioner from an Orthodox Jerusalem family, a Muslim belly-dancer from Tel Aviv and a Christian ballerina from Nazareth.
The one declared winner when the contest concludes on Friday evening will be Israel's representative at the Miss Trans Star International pageant in Barcelona in September.
It must be a notable event in the lives of the 12 contestants.
"My goal is not to win, but to send a message to the Arab communities in Israel or abroad, to accept the other," Carolin Khoury, told Reuters. She is a Muslim who described overcoming sometimes violent opposition to her gender choice from her family.
Israel has mostly liberal laws on sexual identity, with openly gay and transgender troops in its conscript military. But people who are homosexual or transgender often face hostility from religious conservatives in the Jewish majority and Muslim and Christian Arab minorities.
"Israeli people like transgenders but they don't have enough information about transgenders," said pageant judge Efrat Tilma at the prestigious venue, Tel Aviv's Habima National Theatre.
"Among us there are judges, there are doctors, there are lawyers, there are people who are working in hi-tech positions and, as well, people who would like to go to the Israeli parliament and to represent us in our parliament."
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