Jerusalem’s chief rabbi on Monday sent a formal letter to Mayor Moshe Lion asking him to prevent LGBT flags from being put up ahead of the annual pride parade because they “mar the city.” “Unfortunately, I have to address the painful topic of the ‘parade’ about to be held next week,” Rabbi Aryeh Stern wrote in the letter, which was leaked to the press. “I know that by law the mayor doesn’t have the authority to prevent the parade and therefore I ask you to at least give an order not to hang the flags, which mar the city.” “I trust you to act wisely and spare us this embarrassment,” Stern told Lion, a political ally of the city’s ultra-Orthodox council members. In previous years, ultra-Orthodox and religious council members were angered by the pride flags put up next to the Jerusalem Great Synagogue on King George Street, along which the pride parade passes.