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The women, who are in Israel for a gathering of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, arrived at the Western Wall at about 7 A.M. along with members of the women of the wall organization, which regularly organizes prayers at the site for ultra-Orthodox, Reform and Conservative women.
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Over a hundred women arrived at the Western Wall Wednesday morning wrapped in prayer shawls and wearing kippahs, to mark 20 years since the inception of the women of the wall organization.
women of the wall organizes female prayer groups at the Western Wall each month on Rosh Hodesh. The participants usually wear tallit, teffilin and kippah and chant from the Torah.
The vast majority of the women of the wall are feminist Orthodox who come to the site once a month to say a prayer and sing quietly, she said. Because this time there were about a hundred women there, it sounded louder.
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For the past twenty years, on the first day of each month in the Jewish calendar, a day which Jewish tradition teaches gives a special honor to women, the group “women of the wall” comes together for an early morning prayer service at the Western Wall.
Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and a founding member of “women of the wall” stated, “We feel that there is a great deal of hypocrisy here: On the one hand, the Western Wall symbolizes the unity of the Jewish people, and on the other hand women, who comprise half of this nation, are being silenced, along with the traditions of the largest Jewish movement in the world.”
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VIDEO:Praying in Her Own Voice:women of the wall
- Directed by Yael Katzir and produced by Dan Katzir and Ravit Markus. This powerful film documents the courageous struggle of the famed women of the wall movement. This group has spearheaded the battle for female equality in the religious world.
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Some 20 years after they first wrapped themselves in prayer shawls at Judaism's holiest site, the women of the wall (WOW) were the subject of much criticism during the Sephardic chief rabbi's weekly Saturday evening sermon.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef came out on Saturday night against the feminist lineup at the Western Wall and called for the condemnation of its members. According to him, the movement is made up of stupid women who do not act for Heaven's sake, but merely because they want equality.
WOW Chairwoman Anat Hoffman reported to Ynet in response, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef established negative motives for the group of women praying at the Western Wall without knowing even one of the women. Because the motive of the group is awe of God, I invite him in the name of women of the wall to meet us and get to know us.
The Masorti Movement Chairman Yizhar Hess, said in response, It is a shame that Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a talmid-chacham and Torah great, allows himself to disrespect the women's revolution that is taking over the Jewish street in Israel and the world. Torah scholars, be careful of your words.
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The woman was visiting the site with the religious women's group women of the wall to take part in the monthly Rosh Hodesh prayer.
Police were called to the area after the group asked to read aloud from a Torah scroll.
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Nofrat Frenkel had been taking part in a monthly ceremony organised by the women of the wall religious group.
The chairwoman of the group, Anat Hoffman, criticised the move as unprecedented in Israel's history.
women of the wall organises prayer groups at the Western Wall on the first day of month in the Hebrew calendar.
There are differing religious opinions in Israel as to whether women should wear the tallit, which is traditionally worn by some men during religious observance.
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Police detained a woman from the women of the wall (WOW) movement Wednesday after she donned a prayer shawl and held a Torah scroll at the Western Wall compound in violation of a court ruling. The woman's act caused a commotion during Rosh Chodesh prayers at the holy site.
It should be noted that the High Court of Justice previously ruled that women of the wall must adhere to the site's customs.
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The woman was visiting the wall with some 20 members of the religious group women of the wall, which has been holding a Rosh Hodesh prayer for the new month at the Western Wall for the past 21 years.
Police, who were called in when the women took out their Torah scroll in the main wall plaza, not in the women's section, detained Nofrat Frenkel of the Conservative Movement for two and a half hours and had her sign a statement saying she would not go near the wall for the next 15 days.
women of the wall chairwoman Anat Hoffman said that this is the first time that a woman has been arrested because she wrapped herself in a tallit and read from the Torah.
Rabbi Gilad Kariv, associate director of Israel's Reform movement, said that all over the world women are entitled to wear the tallit, and only in the land of the Jews are they excluded from the social custom and even arrested for praying.
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As they do at the start of every month, Israel’s women of the wall went to the Kotel on Wednesday to celebrate Rosh Chodesh.
But this time, instead of services concluding with the Musaf prayer, the experience ended with a 25 year old participant, a medical student who was wearing a tallit and carrying the group’s new Torah scroll, being arrested by police and charged with “performing a religious act that offends the feelings of others.”
The morning began pleasantly, Anat Hoffman told The Sisterhood. Hoffman chairs women of the wall (WoW) and is director of the Israel Religious Action Center, which is part of the Reform Movement.
Forty two women, including a group visiting from New York’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, gathered in the women’s section of the Kotel at 7 A.M. to pray the morning service. Then, because it is Rosh Chodesh Kislev, they sang Hallel, “in full voice,” said Hoffman. Sixteen of the women were wearing tallitot, she said, but “there was no complaint whatsoever from anyone.”
women of the wall is the only group in all of Israel in which Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews pray together, Hoffman said.
She said that they are also considering suing the religious head of the Shas political party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who in his weekly public address last Saturday night said that women who pray in a tallit at the Kotel are “stupid” and “deviant,” and “should be slapped,” as reported earlier this week by The Sisterhood.
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In honor of the new Jewish month of Kislev, I joined my mom at women of the wall this morning. women of the wall is an organization that has existed for more than twenty years and meets monthly on Rosh Hodesh, the start of each Jewish month. Traditionally, Rosh Hodesh has been a time for women to gather to celebrate their womanhood around the lunar cycle (Hello Red Tent). WOW was founded in reaction to the present reality of the Western Wall in Jerusalem — the women’s section is significantly smaller than the men’s and there is not a place for women to sing or read the Torah out loud, unlike the men’s side. At their monthly meetings, WOW members and various guests gather in the back of the women’s section and pray in a huddle. Women will put on their tallitot, their prayer shawls, and a few even dare to wear kippot. _
To read the rest on IRAC's blog, click her
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I am shocked by the recent criminal arrest at the Kotel. Nofrat Frenkel, a 28 year-old Israeli medical student, a committed Conservative Jew, and a friend and fellow member of women of the wall, was arrested and interrogated last Wednesday morning for wearing tallit during our Rosh Chodesh service. Or, as her interrogator explained to her while she was detained at the Kishle police station, “I accuse you of acting provocatively and in a way which upset public order.”
I immediately recognized the arrest as history-making: on November 18th, 2009, a deeply religious young woman was arrested for wearing tallit, which she wears everyday, and for holding a new sefer Torah, recently given to women of the wall by Women of Reform Judaism. In my twenty-one years of praying at the wall every Rosh Chodesh, no woman has ever been arrested before on such grounds.
Nofrat, who has been forbidden to approach the Wall for the next fifteen days, has asked me whether it is safe for her to wear tallit again to our services. I told her, “wear it.” But hers is not an unfounded question, even were it not for her arrest. Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, former Chief Rabbi of Israel, and current spiritual leader of the Shas political party, has said – and this is documented – that women of the wall members are stupid, that we should be slapped on both cheeks, and wrapped in our tallitot and buried.
At IRAC, we work everyday to change Israel’s current religious system, which is so backwards and out of date that it allows for a woman like Nofrat to be arrested and tried as a felon for openly expressing her Judaism. We fight for everyone’s religious freedom. We work as a countercurrent, moving against increasingly pervasive and accepted religious discrimination.
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together. It was my first meeting with the women of the wall — Conservative, Reform and Orthodox women who have been meeting to pray together every Rosh Hodesh over the past 21 years. Some wear a tallit, tefillin or a yarmulke, some do not: each according to her religious outlook. I immediately felt that my place was with them.
Each month we suffered verbal violence. The police looked on with amusement. The high court had decided some years ago that prevention of violence is justifiable grounds for the police acting to avoid an “offense to public sensitivity.”
The morning of Rosh Hodesh Kislev, November 18, was a cold Jerusalem morning. We stood, 42 women of the wall, and prayed in the women’s section. Our tallitot were hidden under our coats; the sefer Torah was in its regular bag. There was no booing, no pushing, no shouting.
We were surprised that our service passed off without any disturbance, and we thought that, perhaps, they had already become accustomed to our presence and that we could even read from the Torah, opposite the stones of the Kotel. Then, just moments after we had removed the sefer Torah from its bag, two men entered the women’s section and began abusing us.
The Kotel belongs to all the people of Israel. The Kotel is not a Haredi synagogue, and the women of the wall will not allow it to become such.
I was banned from visiting the Kotel for two weeks, and a criminal file has been opened against me. I hope that the file will be closed, especially so that my medical studies will not be jeopardized. Perhaps, with God’s help, this regretful event will awaken wide public objection, enough for the high court to re-evaluate its decision and annul it.
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Last month, Nofrat Frenkel, who was wearing a tallit, a kippah and carrying a Torah scroll, was arrested during the women of the wall’s Rosh Chodesh prayers. Hoffman says: “This law is ludicrous. The role of women in religion has changed throughout the world — everywhere but Israel. At the Wall, there are 13 regulations, 12 of which passed under the reign of King George V in 1924, thank you very much. Then in 1993, they passed a 13th regulation: one cannot perform a religious act that offends the feelings of others. The Druze policeman who was interrogating Nofrat had the difficult job of trying to establish whether she was intending to cause an injury to the feelings of others.”
Hoffman first came to prominence in Israel with her campaign against Bezeq. “I thought we should have an itemised bill like everyone else in the world. I saw them in America, it made perfect sense. We didn’t have it but now we do,” says Hoffman with a smile in perfectly accented American English, learned while at college in California. In the process of her campaign, she unseated Bezeq’s director general, Zvi Amid, and effectively broke the company’s monopoly.
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The arrest of Nofrat Frenkel for wearing a tallit at the kotel on Rosh Hodesh Kislev compels us to raise our voices and engage our communities in joint action. We invite you to join in a community-wide Day of Solidarity and Support for women of the wall (WOW), to take place all over North America on Rosh Hodesh Tevet, Thursday December 17th, the sixth day of Chanukah. With this national grassroots initiative, we will express our support for the rights of the women of the wall to assemble at the Kotel and to pray there with dignity, in safety and in shared community.
As with many other women’s grass roots efforts, each community, organization and institution shall develop its own program of prayer or study and shall reach out as widely as possible to its constituencies. For some groups, this day of solidarity and support will be in the manner of WOW, including tefillah and the reading of the Torah. For others, the program may be a lunch and learn text study session; or a women’s Chanukah observance. For yet others, it might be a gathering of three or more friends in a living room or office who will dedicate their joint prayer and/or study to the women of the wall. Some communities may want to add to their programs a screening of Yael Katzir’s film, Praying in Her Own Voice.
We ask that you convene a program that shows your support for this initiative. Please share your plans and document your activities by sending an email to jackie.ellenson@gmail.com. We also ask that you send a photo of your gathering to Judith Sherman Asher, judithrafaela@mac.com, who is a member of women of the wall in Israel. Please caption the photo with the names of the participants, the date, location of, and information about your program. Feel free to add a short message of support for women of the wall. This will greatly strengthen the morale of our sisters in Israel.
We hope you will join in a groundswell of support of American women for the women of the wall. We encourage you to send this letter to any other women’s groups who might want to participate. As Rosh Hodesh Tevet takes place during the week of Chanukah, the holiday of religious freedom, what better time to affirm the right of women to raise their voices in prayer at the Wall!
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Visitors to the Western Wall, both Jewish and non-Jewish, respect the place and do not try to oppose the rules and restrictions set forth by the rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitch. The result is that the Western Wall and the plaza that surrounds it, many believe, have been turned into a haredi location. The list of groups, organizations and individuals who feel that the Western Wall has changed from a national site connected with Jewish history and legacy into a strict haredi location with all the relevant interdictions and extreme rules of modesty is getting longer every day. High on that list are the non-Jewish tourists or Arab residents who are required to remove any external signs of their religion; the secular women who are forbidden to use the separated aisle on the upper side of the plaza designated for observant Jews; and the female soldiers who are forbidden to sing or to take their oath aloud in IDF ceremonies. The latest flare-up surrounded the arrest of Nofrat Frankel, a member of the women of the wall prayer group, who wore a tallit and carried a Torah scroll, an action for which Israeli law can impose a six-month prison sentence and a NIS 10,000 fine.
Members of women of the wall, which considers itself to be acting within the boundaries of Halacha, were outraged. (This writer is a member of the organization.)
WOW is deeply dismayed by the detention of Nofrat Frankel simply because she wore a tallit while praying at the Western Wall with our group, responds member Batya (Betsy) Kallus. women of the wall have been praying at the Western Wall every Rosh Hodesh, as well as on Tisha Be'av and Purim, for 21 years. Never before, during this entire time, has any of us been arrested. Over the years, we have donned tallitot, read from the Torah, waved the lulav, read the Scroll of Esther and the Book of Lamentations as well as chanted Hallel out loud, all at the Western Wall.
We view Nofrat's arrest as part of the expanding level of control that the ultra-Orthodox are exerting at the Western Wall. Their efforts to limit women's participation in prayer at the Western Wall does not reflect the general trend within the modern Orthodox community throughout the world, which recognizes women's rights to don tallitot. It is disturbing that only at the Western Wall is it illegal for a woman to don a tallit. In conclusion, women of the wall believe that the Western Wall is a national symbol of the entire Jewish people and belongs to all of us, women and men alike.
AFTER YEARS of incredibly large audiences, including non-religious, who came to the plaza for the mourning prayers of Yom Kippur and for the slihot period preceding Rosh Hashana, it seems that the stringent modesty and separation rules imposed have created a strong sense of alienation. Last Tisha Be'av, for the first time in about 10 years, there were far fewer non-religious participants at the Western Wall. We just felt uncomfortable last year, recalls a group from the Conservative Youth Movement. We were asked to separate already on the upper plaza, so we decided not to come this year.
DESPITE THE fact that in many popular traditions, women are associated with fidelity to the Western Wall, women are perhaps the most vocal over alleged discrimination there. women of the wall, a group of women from all denominations in Judaism, who first appeared there in 1988, are perhaps the most well known. The group, which follows rules of Halacha as determined by the Orthodox rabbis it consulted and does not consider itself a minyan, was created at the end of the first women's conference held here. This eventually led to the foundation of the women's lobby in Israel. The founders were a group of modern Orthodox Jewish women from Israel and the US who came to celebrate the conference with a Torah scroll in the women's section of the Western Wall. Despite their being Orthodox, they were forcibly removed from the area, some of them even injured. Since then, for the past 21 years, the group has gone to pray there every Rosh Hodesh and read from their Torah scroll.
Not surprisingly, the haredi opposition to their presence, together with the indifference of the secular women's and human rights associations, managed to convince the police and the various governments that the right of women to pray according to their custom and the halachic requirements was too much of a threat to the state. The High Court of Justice ultimately ruled that the group should pray according to its customs - meaning with tallitot and reading aloud from the Torah away from the place which, for two millennia, has been the most important religious site for Jews all over the world, and sent the women to the Robinson's Arch site nearby. This site has also become the alternative Wall for mixed prayer groups of the Reform and Conservative movements.
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About 200 members of the women of the wall organization arrived at the Western Wall in order to take part in the monthly Rosh Hodesh prayer, and to protest the arrest of their fellow member at the site.
Police officers separated the two sides after Haredi worshipers approached the women's group members and yelled out not Jewish, send them to church, and Nazis, blasphemy.
Chairman of the women of the wall organization, Anat Hoffman, said that the group's actions were not meant a provocation but as a silent protest against the government's holy site bill which she claims discriminates against women.
Last month, police arrested Nofat Frankel who was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, due to the fact that she was wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallit).
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Video:women of the wall, December 18th, 2009
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Under their coats many of the women, supporters of a group of religious activists called women of the wall, wore a tallit, or fringed prayer shawl, a ritual garment traditionally worn only by men. Some wore their prayer shawls openly, an illegal act in this particular setting that can incur a fine or several months in jail.
Last month Nofrat Frenkel, 28, an Israeli medical student and a committed follower of Conservative Judaism, a modern, egalitarian strain, was the first woman in Israel to be arrested during prayers at the Western Wall, also known as the Kotel, for publicly wrapping herself in a tallit.
The women of the wall, who meet for prayers at the Kotel at the start of every Hebrew month, are at the vanguard of a feminist struggle in Orthodox Judaism and other more contemporary strains to adapt time-honored religious practice for the modern age. They came in droves on Friday, the first day of the Hebrew month of Tevet, to express their outrage over Ms. Frenkel’s case.
Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of women of the wall, which was founded in 1988, said she had never seen so many turn up in the month of Tevet.
Critics of the women of the wall say that their practices — like holding organized prayers, singing out loud, carrying a Torah scroll and wearing prayer shawls — offend the more traditional worshipers at the site.
Twenty years ago, having suffered verbal and physical abuse as they prayed, the women of the wall petitioned the Supreme Court to have their right to religious freedom recognized, on grounds that the Kotel does not belong to the Orthodox establishment alone.
“These women come here like a persecuted group,” said David Barhoum, a criminal lawyer there on behalf of the women of the wall. If anything, he said on Friday, the criminal behavior seemed to be coming from the other side.
Across a partition, in the men’s section of the Kotel, a group of ultra-Orthodox men gathered to harass the women as they sang and prayed. The men shouted “Gevalt!” — expressing their revulsion in Yiddish — and called the women’s prayer an abomination. One or two threw objects and spat at them. In the women’s section, some Orthodox female worshipers joined in the insults.
Jewish religious law is open to interpretation. The women of the wall argue that even according to some Orthodox opinions, they are doing nothing wrong.
“Women are exempt from carrying out certain commandments, but not forbidden,” said Ms. Frenkel, who kept her prayer shawl hidden beneath her jacket by the Kotel this time around.
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In 2003, the Israeli supreme court ruled that the women of the wall could not hold vocal prayers at the wall as this presented a threat to law and order.
Hoffman said the police commander for the wall recently told her the women could be arrested for wearing fringed black and white prayer shawls like those used by the men. He did say something flowery would be okay, said Hoffman.
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The diplomatic coda to the November Kotel episode was only part of the affair’s aftermath. On and around December 17, Jewish women’s prayer groups and Torah study groups met for special gatherings around the world to mark the new Jewish month of Tevet in solidarity with women of the wall, the women’s prayer group of which Frenkel is a part.
In a rare example of interdenominational work, Reform Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson and Rivka Haut, a Brooklyn Orthodox activist, worked together to promote the grass-roots effort. Ellenson, director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, an organization of female Reform rabbis, and Haut, who organized the first women’s group prayer service at the Kotel in 1988 penned a joint letter promoting the gatherings.
Frenkel’s police detention was but the latest in a series of incidents over many years involving women of the wall—a trans-denominational group—and the Orthodox rabbinical authorities that control the holy site, which marks the outer perimeter of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans. As is standard in Orthodox prayer venues, the site is sex segregated, and women may pray only individually and not as a community or minyan as men do.
women of the wall challenges Orthodox edicts that ban women from holding formal services at the Kotel site or conducting themselves in ways that vary from strict Orthodox practice. The Torah study groups and women’s prayer groups that gathered in solidarity with women of the wall represented a wide spectrum of the movement that has coalesced around this issue in response to the Frenkel incident.
When she heard about Frenkel’s experience, Simonne Horwitz, an assistant professor of history at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, hastily planned a trip to Israel for the December 18 service held at the Kotel. She joined 152 other women who came with women of the wall, many of them wearing prayer shawls under raincoats. Masorti officials say that many were members of their movement.
“I really felt the need to be there and not just talk about support,” Horwitz said. “It was my first time being able to really pray at the wall and not just put the note in. It felt really different, being part of a group.”
But women of the wall chairperson Anat Hoffman criticized the lack of political response to the treatment that Frenkel received. “I want Michael Oren to be drowning in e-mails and faxes and letters saying: ‘Do something about this. This is something we care about,’” said Hoffman, who is also executive director of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center.
Hoffman said that when she led the women in Rosh Hodesh prayer at Kotel, she heard ultra-Orthodox men jeering them, calling them “prostitutes” and shouting that “the Holocaust happened because of you.”
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The leader of women of the wall, a group of women who gather monthly to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, was questioned by police, fingerprinted, and told that she may be charged with a felony for violating the rules of conduct at what is considered Judaism’s most sacred site.
Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center, said that police interrogated her for more than an hour on January 5 about her activities during women of the wall’s last monthly service in December. Speaking by phone from Jerusalem, Hoffman said she did nothing differently that day than she had for the 21 years of her group’s existence.
Hoffman said that the police told her that she was being investigated for violating a decision of the Israeli Supreme Court that prohibits women from wearing prayer shawls at the Wall. But the women of the wall claim to have accommodated themselves to the ruling; instead of donning the black-and-white tallit, traditional for men, they each wear a smaller, multi-colored shawl like a scarf around the neck and under a coat, so as not to offend the strict sensibilities of other men and women at the Wall.
“It’s a sad moment,” said Hoffman. She has gone to the police station in Jerusalem many times to lodge complaints against people who she says have attacked and occasionally physically hurt members of her group; none of those people have ever been arrested, she said. But this is the first time that she has been subject to interrogation herself. A skillful advocate, she said that the questioning did not bother her, but the fingerprinting did. “There is something very violating about it,” she said.
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The campaign against women of the wall steps up. Yet learned that chairman of the feminist Jewish worship group, Anat Hoffman, was investigated Wednesday by the police on suspicions of violating a legal directive and of rebellion following a minyan - or prayer quorum - she and her colleagues held three weeks ago – the start of the Hebrew month of Tevet – in the Western Wall pavilion.
The police reported that Hoffman was investigated at the Merhav David Station after the events at the Western Wall on the grounds that she disrupted the status quo at the site. Hoffman was questioned about her role in organizing the prayer service and the clashes that ensued. She was reportedly asked to give her finger prints. At the end of the investigation, she was released to go home.
The women of the wall chairwoman claimed that most of the group's members are Orthodox and that the prayer services they hold are conducted according to halacha. She also said that their consistent attendance for more than 20 years makes their monthly minyan a Western Wall custom, such that it must not be viewed as a one-off provocation.
I have never heard of summoning a man for investigation for the same offenses of wrapping himself in a tallit or reading the Torah, said Hoffman. It is unbelievable that this is happening to us here in the State of Israel.
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Anat Hoffman of women of the wall was detained and fingerprinted by Israeli police.Then, imagine that one day, one of the worshippers is arrested, hauled into police custody for doing nothing more than offending the sensibilities of others, whatever that means. A month later, the leader of the group is questioned by police, fingerprinted and warned that she is at risk of arrest. Imagine the uproar! Imagine if this were Sweden or France or Argentina, and suddenly prayer became a crime. The Jewish defense organizations would broadcast their collective outrage with the speed of a “send” button.
So what do we do when these real events happened in Israel, at Jerusalem’s Western Wall?
The arrest in November of Nofrat Frenkel of women of the wall for the alleged “crime” of carrying a Torah and wearing a tallit in the shadow of the Kotel’s ancient stones cannot be dismissed as yet another oddity of Israeli life. Especially when that was followed, on January 5, by the interrogation and fingerprinting of Anat Hoffman, director of the Israel Religious Action Center, who has led women of the wall for its 21 years and who was told that she is now suspected of a felony.
And we must stand behind and with the brave consistency of the women of the wall, who have congregated at the Kotel every month for more than two decades, despite assaults from Haredim and, increasingly, from the government of Israel. The stepped-up intimidation of this growing group of women is a terrible reflection on Israeli democracy.
“Our prayer is authentic, it is pure, it is not a provocation,” Anat Hoffman told the Forward a day after she was detained by police, the black ink still staining the tips of her fingers. “We are part of the fabric of the Wall.”
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Hoffman is the chairwoman of women of the wall (WOW), a group that advocates for women's rights to pray at the Kotel, or Western Wall. The Kotel, thought to be a remnant of the second temple that the Romans destroyed in 70 CE, is Judaism's holiest site. While women are allowed to pray in the area, they are allotted a small, separate space and their behavior is subject to restrictions that don't apply to men.
For over two decades, WOW has conducted prayer sessions at the Kotel. They meet every Rosh Chodesh (beginning of the Hebrew month) and read aloud from the Torah--an act that is forbidden to women according to Orthodox Judaism, but allowed by Conservative and Reform Judaism. Some don tallitot, prayer shawls that the Orthodox say are men-only.
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In the twenty-one years that members of women of the wall have prayed together, we’ve celebrated joy and lamented defeat. It was only a matter of time before someone demanded we stop. After twenty-one years of preparing for this day, I was actually taken by surprise when I was summoned to the Jaffa Gate Police Station on January 5th, 2010. I was warned I was being investigated for committing a felony. And my crime? I performed a religious act that offended the feelings of others: praying out loud, reading the Torah, and wearing a talit at the Kotel.
On behalf of the Jewish people fighting for religious pluralism in Israel, I am outraged that one of our leaders, Anat Hoffman, was interrogated and fingerprinted by Jerusalem police on January 5th, 2010. Police told Hoffman, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and leader of women of the wall, that she may be charged with a felony for violating the rules of conduct at what many consider to be Judaism’s most sacred site.
Hoffman’s interrogation came less than two months after the November 18th, 2009 arrest of the women of the wall member Nofrat Frankel for wearing a talit and holding a sefer Torah.
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The women are right in demanding their space at the Wall, but it is more important for them to be smart. After hearing about what happened on December 18, rosh hodesh Tevet, during the women of the wall's monthly service, I am convinced that we should take the smart path and demand that the government solve the problem.
IN OUR struggle for religious pluralism, we should look for a solution that promises no confrontation with those praying at the Wall, and a maximum of dignity, inspiration and spirituality for all. The latter three cannot be achieved today, because the women of the wall will always be intimidated, threatened, insulted and scorned by those who lack human decency and do not live by the words of the prophet, The righteous shall live by his own faith (Habakkuk 2:5). The women of the wall will be continually disturbed by those yelling and cursing them. The atmosphere will not be peaceful, inspirational or spiritual.
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The Israeli police’s recent interrogation of women of the wall leader Anat Hoffman and member Nofrat Frenkel “opens a new and ominous chapter in intra-Jewish relations,” The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism declared in a sharply worded statement released January 11.
USCJ, which represents 670 synagogues in North America, is urging its members to write letters of protest to Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren.
Frenkel was detained by police and threatened with arrest for wearing a tallit at the Kotel, Judaism’s holiest site, in November. Hoffman, who chairs women of the wall was detained and fingerprinted by police on January 5, and warned that she was “being investigated for a felony” offense, also for wearing a tallit and reading the Torah at the Kotel.
women of the wall is a women’s prayer group which has met for some 21 years to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, or Kotel, as it is known in Hebrew, which marks the place where the Second Temple stood until its destruction by the Romans in 70 C.E. The Orthodox rabbinic authorities that control the site have divided it into sex-segregated sections, as per Orthodox worship custom, and prohibit women from praying there in a formal group or in other ways that differ from common Orthodox practice.
women of the wall, which prays there at the start of every new Jewish month, challenges these strictures.
Rabbi Steven Wernick, USCJ’s executive vice president, told The Forward, “The harassment of those who are progressive such as we saw with Nofrat Frenkel and now with Anat Hoffman is unconscionable.”
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JERUSALEM (JTA) -- The Conservative synagogue movement is launching a campaign to protest the recent questioning and possible prosecution of a leader of the group women of the wall.
For more than two decades, the group has been organizing regular women’s prayer services at the Western Wall and pressing for expanded worship rights at Judaism's holiest pilgrimage site. Last week its chairwoman, Anat Hoffman, was summoned to a Jerusalem police station for questioning.
According to Hoffman, also director of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center and a former member of the Jerusalem City Council, she was questioned by police about her role in women of the wall, fingerprinted and told that her case was being referred to the attorney general for prosecution.
I think it was a meeting of intimidation, Hoffman told JTA.
Hoffman's questioning comes nearly two months after another women of the wall member, Nofrat Frenkel, was arrested after she and other women began reading from a Torah scroll in the course of the group's regular prayer session at the wall, timed to coincide with the start of the new Hebrew month.
Frenkel and Hoffman were informed that they were in violation of an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that, citing concerns about public safety, denied women the right to read from the Torah in the regular women's section of the wall. The ruling resulted in the designation of a nearby site, known as Robinson's Arch, as the place for women to pray as a group with a Torah scroll.
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In the meantime, leaders of the Israeli Reform movement and the North American Conservative movement issued statements asking Jews in the Diaspora to write to their Israeli ambassadors. Movement leaders say the objective of these letters is to protest the January 5 questioning and fingerprinting of Anat Hoffman, the chairwoman of women of the wall, and the November arrest of Israeli medical student Nofrat Frenkel, who was shoved and then detained by Jerusalem police during a women of the wall prayer service, ostensibly because she was wearing a prayer shawl and holding the group’s Torah scroll. Hoffman said that Jerusalem police have told her and Frenkel that each may be charged with a felony for “committing a religious act that offends the feelings of others.”
Hoffman, who heads the Reform-affiliated Israel Religious Action Center, told the Forward that she wants Jews around the world to engage in acts of solidarity with women of the wall during the Sabbath of January 15–16, which marks the start of the month of Shvat.
Jonathan Peled, Oren’s spokesman, said that the embassy has received a few such letters. Oren is unaware of any campaigns protesting the treatment of women of the wall, Peled said, but noted that “everyone is free to write to the ambassador and every letter will be attended to.”
A full accounting of Frenkel’s questioning by police was requested by Oren in late December, after he misinformed an audience of Conservative Jews about what had happened to her. Oren later told the Forward that he had received “incomplete information” about the incident, and was ordering an inquiry that would be ready within days. Peled said the ambassador had received the results of this inquiry. The spokesman could offer no information on the contents of the report, and said Oren was unavailable for comment.
Members of women of the wall have been meeting at the Kotel at the start of each Jewish month since 1988. They lost their lawsuit seeking permission to read from a Torah scroll as a group in the women’s section of the Kotel in 2003, when Israel’s Supreme Court ruled against them.
According to Yoffie, additional strategies being considered by the URJ include renewing legal action or reaching out to members of the Israeli government or Israel’s parliament “to try to convince them to do something.” The Reform movement is also considering running a campaign in Israel to raise public awareness of the issue, which, Yoffie said, has been virtually absent from the press there.
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If you want a quick lesson on the growing gender segregation and discrimination in Israel, I suggest taking a look at the policies in place at the Western Wall, which are being constantly revised to deny women equal access at this sacred space. Things have changed tremendously in my 21 years of going to pray with women of the wall every Rosh Hodesh.
women of the wall is sometimes accused of protesting against the “status quo” at the Western Wall. In fact, there is no status quo at the Wall — things change all the time. Men and women used to enter the Western Wall plaza together through the Jewish Quarter’s Dung Gate; in 1994, separate, gender-segregated entrances were created. Within the past decade, women soldiers were still allowed to sing the national anthem during ceremonies at the Wall — now they are instructed to be content with mouthing the words.
People sometimes ask us: “When will you achieve your goal?” This is a question one asks of a general. A general has soldiers, uniforms and a strategy. With women of the wall, we don’t know whether 10 or 100 women will show up each month — though we hope for 10,000. We have no uniforms, as we are a pluralistic group and come from all streams of Judaism. As far as strategy, we are only as bold as our least brave member.
Simply put, our goal is to obtain the freedom to pray and to do everything that is halachically permitted for women on the women’s side of the mechitza. This includes reciting prayers together that do not require a minyan, and, yes, most of all, it includes reading from the Torah. (Though it has been many years since we have been able to read from the Torah in the women’s section at the Wall.) At a minimum, we want to be allowed to pray at the Wall for one hour each month, free of injury and fear. This should not be a provocative request.
Since the recent controversy, women of the wall members have been accused of acting as a gateway to bringing about Buddhist chants and Catholic hymns at the Kotel. This “slippery slope” argument implies that those of us in women of the wall are not practicing Judaism, but moving one step further away, in the process ushering in non-Jewish religious services at the Wall.
This is not correct. Our prayer is halachic and allows for the entire Jewish world to partake. We are not the slippery slope away from Judaism, but the path toward greater involvement and inclusion.
Anat Hoffman is director of the Israel Religious Action Center of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism and chair of women of the wall.
To read the original article in The Forward, click her
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This past week I’ve been moved in so many ways – by the heroic efforts of the Israeli emergency responders and by international aid relief efforts in Haiti, and more personally, by the outpouring of support we’ve received from around the world for women of the wall and religious pluralism.
From one of my favorite passages in Isaiah: “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:1). The walls of the house can be built of anything, anywhere; it is the people who dwell there that count.
On behalf of the Jewish people fighting for religious pluralism in Israel, I am outraged that one of our leaders, Anat Hoffman, was interrogated and fingerprinted by Jerusalem police on January 5th, 2010. Police told Hoffman, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and leader of women of the wall, that she may be charged with a felony for violating the rules of conduct at what many consider to be Judaism’s most sacred site.
Hoffman’s interrogation came less than two months after the November 18th, 2009 arrest of the women of the wall member Nofrat Frankel for wearing a talit and holding a sefer Torah.
We are shocked by the brutal and callous insults to which women of the wall have been subjected. Many of these curses cannot be repeated in polite company. Israeli police have seen fit to arrest women who go to the wall for peaceful prayer, and make no attempt to reprimand those who spit and curse at them, a stark reminder of the power enjoyed by the Israeli ultra-Orthodox, and their success in forcing their religious practices on an entire nation.
If this were to happen in any other country in the world, the Jewish community would be up in arms. Israel is the rare democracy today that tolerates and even endorses religious discrimination against Jews.
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For more than 20 years “women of the wall,” an organization of Orthodox, Masorti, and Reform women, has sought to realize women’s right to pray (together) at the Kotel. They have been subject to curses, spat upon, and at times worse - but they have come devotedly every Rosh Hodesh to worship at the Wall. Recently one of their number, a member of the Masorati movement, was arrested because she wore a tallit - something that has become customary among many women in Jewish communities throughout the world.
At the end of the 1990s, on the evenings of Tisha b’Av and Shavuot, the Masorati movement sought to conduct a prayer service at the upper end of the plaza opposite the Kotel. Orthodox worshippers could not tolerate seeing men and women praying together, in one minyan. Things degenerated into violence.
The Masorti movement accepted this arrangement, although it did not renege on its right to pray at the Kotel Plaza itself. women of the wall did not accept this arrangement; rather, it was imposed upon them. They were prohibited from reading the Torah in the Plaza (in the Women’s Section!), so they too come to the site of Robinson’s Arch in order to complete their prayers and to read the Torah every Rosh Hodesh.
The “Traditional Kotel,” notwithstanding its limitations, is an accomplishment. But the way towards equality is still a long one. Particularly annoying is the status held by the association known as the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which in practice conducts all the matters of the Kotel, strictly enforcing the rules imposed by Rabbi Rabinowitz. This private association was established in 1988 in order to administer the project of the Western Wall tunnels and to produce educational projects, but over the course of time, through a process of creeping annexation, it gradually became a kind of owner of the Kotel as a whole. In 2004 the Legal Advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office wrote an opinion according to which, “Despite the fact that this association was set up as a private association, it possesses explicitly governmental aspects.” This opinion was accepted, and the flood gates were opened.
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Conservative Jewish leaders called for the letter-writing campaign to Ambassador Michael Oren after Nofrat Frenkel, an Israeli medical student and observant Conservative Jew, was detained and interrogated by Israeli police in November while wearing a prayer shawl and carrying a Torah during a prayer service held by women of the wall, an activist group, in the women’s section of the Wall.
In January, Anat Hoffman, director of Reform Judaism’s Israel Religious Action Center and leader of women of the wall, was taken to a Jerusalem police station, where she was interrogated and fingerprinted, and informed that she might be charged with a felony for violating rules of conduct at the Western Wall.
women of the wall also disputed the notion of Robinson’s Arch as an alternative prayer site for them. In a written response to the embassy’s letter, members of the group said, “We do not hold egalitarian services…. Our rights can be realized in the women’s section at the Kotel; this is what we have asked and continue to ask…. To deny us this practice at the Kotel is not ‘compromise,’ as the Embassy response would have it — where is the concession on the part of those who vilify, deny, silence, and banish us?”
Some Conservative leaders thought the embassy’s letter focused too narrowly on the issue of the Western Wall — or Kotel, as it’s known in Hebrew — and did not respond to the larger concerns that the movement’s letter-writing campaign had raised. “Our letter did not exclusively address issues of the Kotel, but rather sees the Kotel as one example of… the increasing haredization of Israel, and the increasing alienation of the majority of the world’s Jews from not only religious participation, but from any freedom of religious experience in the State of Israel,” said Julie Schonfeld, head of the Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of American Conservative rabbis.
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P.S. To set the record straight: I was questioned by the police about my activities with women of the wall and then fingerprinted – I was not and do not anticipate being arrested.
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He pointed to the interrogation by police in early January of women of the wall chairwoman Anat Hoffman, who is also director of the Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), as a recent example of such tactics.
Hoffman was questioned by police after taking part in an all-female prayer session at the Western Wall in December, and was subsequently fingerprinted before being released to go home.
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NIF cites several instances from recent months as indications that Israel is becoming less tolerant toward groups fighting for human and civil rights. The list includes attempts by nongovernmental organizations’ watchdog groups to stop funding for not-for-profits that do not support the views of the Israeli government; the interrogation of Anat Hoffman, leader of the feminist religious group women of the wall, by the police, and the arrest of Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, during a demonstration in East Jerusalem.
Simultaneously, NIF supporters began questioning the sources of finance provided to Im Tirtzu — most significantly, the Rev. John Hagee, who is a both a fiery American supporter of Israel’s right wing and the founder of Christians United for Israel.
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The writer served in the Jerusalem City Council for 14 years. She was a founding member of women of the wall and continues to be an advocate for freedom of religion and women’s rights. In 2002, she became the Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), the legal and advocacy arm of the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism.
To read the original article in The Jerusalem Post, click her
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Hoffman, chair of women of the wall, has organized prayer services for women at the Kotel for the past 20 years. She has also been an advisor to Camp George, a Reform summer camp in Parry Sound, Ontario, for several years.
Frenkel and Hoffman were told that they were in violation of a ruling by the Israeli Supreme Court that makes it illegal for women to read the Torah in the women’s section of the Wall for security reasons. The court chose Robinson’s Arch, a site close to the Kotel, as an official location for women to pray with a Torah scroll.
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The women of the wall come to mind first, of course, because they have received the most notice. For 21 years, women from all the Jewish denominations have been trying to pray together once a month in an Orthodox service on the women’s side of the Western Wall in Jerusalem. It is the kind of service Orthodox women’s groups hold all the time. But these women have been harassed and thwarted by the ultra-Orthodox, with the government’s backing. In November, Nofrat Frenkel, a member of the women of the wall group, was arrested for wearing a tallit and carrying a Torah scroll. Two months later, in a clear attempt at intimidation, the police interrogated and fingerprinted the group’s leader Anat Hoffman, threatening her with felony charges.
In response to objections from many quarters about the government’s behavior, the Israeli embassy cited Robinson’s Arch near the Western Wall Plaza as the appropriate prayer site for egalitarian services. The response ignored the fact that the women’s service is not egalitarian, not Conservative or Reform, but follows Orthodox halacha. It doesn’t matter. The charedim, who regard themselves as guardians of the Wall, object to it and the government supports them.
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Haredi men hurled epithets at a gathering of women of the wall members on Monday, screaming “Nazis!” and “You caused the Holocaust!” as the 200 or so mostly female worshipers took part in the group’s monthly prayer vigil at the Western Wall.
The group arrived at the site around 7 on Monday morning to take part in Rosh Chodesh celebrations for the new Jewish month of Adar. After about 30 minutes, however, worshipers on the men’s side of the Western Wall’s prayer section began verbally attacking group members, objecting to their singing and their wearing of tallitot prayer shawls, a spokeswoman for women of the wall (WOW) told The Jerusalem Post.
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At Jerusalem’s Western Wall, the organization women of the wall has been fighting for equal rights to pray for 20 years. Women who chose to wear a kipah and/or tallit, and pray out loud and read from a Torah scroll, have
been given a designated, and many would say, inferior place to worship near but not at the Western Wall itself.
Last November, Nofrat Frenkel, a medical student and a Conservative Jew participating in a monthly Rosh Hodesh service with women of the wall, was arrested at the wall for wearing a tallit and reading from the Torah. Along with others, the National Council of Jewish Women called for the charges to be dropped.
Despite the ensuing uproar, the police have not backed down. In December, Anat Hoffman, director of the Reform movement's Israel Religious Action Center, was questioned by police and told she might be charged with a felony for violating rules of conduct at the wall.
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“The Wall, as we know it, is for the ultra-Orthodox,” said Hoffman, a founding member of women of the wall, whose prayer gatherings in the women’s section of the Wall have been met at various times with violent and abusive behavior from haredi worshippers. “You’ll be given another wall. It’s a nice place, but it’s separate. Is that something people would go for?”
She added, “The struggles in Montgomery, Ala., in 1953 are similar to some of things we’re fighting for right now. Those people in 1953 were not Neanderthals. They were misguided extremists. That’s what we have in Israel, and we’re fighting them.”
Coming to San Francisco on the heels of last month’s women of the wall solidarity service in Union Square, Hoffman was curious as to what brought the 200 or so participants out to the Jan. 10 gathering.
“Who are these people?” she said. “Is it that the Wall is dear to them? Is it the intimidation of women that’s getting them riled up? Is it that access to the sacred in Israel is barred? What is it about women of the wall that hit a nerve?”
Perhaps it was reading news stories that detail the mistreatment of the women of the wall, who were verbally attacked Feb. 15 at the group’s monthly prayer vigil during Rosh Chodesh, the celebration of the beginning of each month in the Jewish calendar.
According to the Jerusalem Post, haredi men hurled epithets at roughly 200 members, screaming “Nazis!” and “You caused the Holocaust!”
Still, it’s nothing that surprised Hoffman, who was interrogated and fingerprinted by police Jan. 5. The incident followed the November arrest of Nofrat Frenkel, another women of the wall member.
“Of course it’s unpleasant to be wearing your tallis and be called this name,” Hoffman said. “But it’s been done in Israel before. The problem is that women have been interrogated and arrested for performing a religious act that is done all over the Jewish world. That is the unacceptable part.
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But Hoffman wasn’t praying; she was making a point. She is a founding member of women of the wall, a group of Israeli women that seeks the right for Jewish women to do what men do at the Western Wall, Judaism’s most sacred site — conduct prayer services, read from a Torah scroll while wearing prayer shawls and sing out loud. I have read about this controversy over the years, and I knew it was explosive.
Hoffman described in detail how explosive it was. This is a battle that has lasted decades and has involved prominent rabbis on two continents, the Knesset, the Israeli Supreme Court, the Jerusalem municipality, the archeology community in Israel and, of course, advocacy groups and lawyers from both sides. It has also involved the police, because women who pray at the Wall need protection from ultra-Orthodox Jews.
There is now an uneasy and temporary truce in the battle, thanks to a creative police official who has worked out an “under the radar” compromise with women of the wall, whereby women can pray if the tallit is worn like a scarf, kippahs look more like hats than kippahs, the praying is not loud and any Torah reading happens at Robinson’s Arch, an archeological site not far from the Wall.
As Hoffman was describing her long and ongoing struggle, I felt a whirlwind of emotions. Although the idea of mixed prayer is not something I was raised with, I found it outrageous that the ultra-Orthodox community — most of whom are not even Zionists! — had the audacity to take ownership of a piece of Israel that clearly belongs to every Jew.
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Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the rabbi in charge of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, criticized the women of the wall, who recently came to demonstrate at the Kotel after the arrests. He was quoted as saying, “The Kotel is a place of Jewish unity and should not be used to divide people.”
Amen. Indeed, the Kotel is not a place for dividing people.
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Suddenly there was tension and something like 10 chairs came flying towards us, and two even got broken, women of the wall Chairwoman Anat Hoffman told Ynet. She said that the timing of the protest, when they were just standing and waiting for prayers to begin, shows that it was carried out by a group who had come especially to provoke.
There was a rabbi there who shouted with a croaky voice, 'See what it means to be a real Jew,' while those around him were like his followers, Hoffman said. As soon as we called the police, about 40 police officers arrived and formed a human barrier between us and the haredim.
The struggle of the women of the wall is not just for the sake of their own ability to pray, but for the sake of anyone who fears for Jerusalem's wellbeing, Hess added.
Shmulik Grossman contributed to this report.
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For the last 20 years, Anat Hoffman has been a politician and community organizer, passionately working for a variety of causes in her home country of Israel. She started by serving as a board member of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (similar to the American Civil Liberties Union), then served on the Jerusalem City Council for 14 years as a member of the left-leaning Meretz Party. She was one of the founders of an organization called women of the wall, which for more than two decades has been fighting for the rights of women to pray at Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall. And she is the director of the Israel Religious Action Center, the legal and advocacy arm of the liberal Jewish Reform Movement in Israel, which works to advance religious pluralism, social justice, and tolerance toward minorities in Israel. Israel has no separation of religion and state; life-cycle events such as marriage and divorce are controlled by strict Orthodox Judaism.
Hoffman was a champion swimmer in Israel, which she says helped prepare her for her political fights. She is the mother of three children.
Womenetics: You wear so many hats, as chair of the women of the wall and director of the Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC). How do you manage your time, and do the roles complement or conflict with each other?
Hoffman: I think they complement each other. IRAC fights for pluralism, not just for the Reform Movement, and women of the wall is showing there’s a place for pluralism at the Wall. So far (the two roles) work well together. The Orthodox have made women the central issue, and I have to give credit to women of the wall, most of whom are Orthodox, but their chair is Reform. But we are all sisters. We can be as bold and courageous as the most weak and afraid Orthodox woman. My problem is not managing my time; my problem is family support. If I deserve a prize for anything, it’s for confronting my family again and again and dealing with my kids and ex-husband. My activities are seen as an economic burden and that I haven’t fulfilled by role as a mother. I’ve cried more over this than anything.
Hoffman: The Wall has resonated better than any other topic. American women already fought for equal pay for equal work and say Israeli women need to fight that battle. But the Wall is ours and yours (American Jewish women). The fact that women can be charged for a felony for something (praying at the Wall) that American women do in their synagogues just doesn’t make sense. I think Barbara Streisand (who bought one of the prayer shawls the women of the wall sell) should come to the Wall and see if they arrest her. That would be huge. I say that her role in the movie Yentl is here now.
If you look at the U.S. State Department report on religious rights, you will see 12 pages about the women of the wall. I’d like to see American Jewish women getting up in arms over this. We fought for the Wall in 1967 when we took it back from the Jordanians, and now we’re fighting for it again from the Orthodox.
Hoffman: Yeah, I guess so. I haven’t studied that skill, but when I look at what I do, working for a cause with others and overcoming our differences, I guess so. The women of the wall is the only multi-denominational group that prays together. It’s been going on for 21 years, and we are all about prayer. The struggle is only a side issue.
To read the original article in Womenetics, click her
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“Most of my secular friends have left,” says Hoffman, a non-Orthodox Jerusalemite who co-founded the women of the wall 20 years ago. “Those who stay give reasons that aren’t long-lasting: Their child is in a good situation in school or their lease isn’t up. They don’t say, ‘Every day there is something that makes me thankful to be a Jerusalemite.’”
Hoffman blames her friends’ exodus on a dearth of city services and on religious coercion. “Today, all kids in Tel Aviv can go to museums free. Why can the Tel Aviv mayor do this and we can’t? Many families can’t afford to take their kids to the zoo, the most visited leisure site in Jerusalem. There’s a law that says that every child in Israel must learn how to swim but most Jerusalem schools don’t teach swimming.”
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Raz is a member of women of the wall, which holds a monthly Rosh Chodesh women's prayer service at the Western Wall. In March, fervently Orthodox men threw chairs at the women as they prepared to pray at the Wall.
Raz filed a police report on the incident on Wednesday. The Israel Religious Action Center has called on the Beersheba police to treat Raz’s assault as a hate crime.
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Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of IRAC, stated that the assault on Noa Raz for wrapping tefillin “should not be seen as an isolated incident, but as taking place within an atmosphere of growing violence toward and intimidation of women who seek to pray freely and equally. Too often these acts of violence are tolerated. The fact that this man thought it acceptable to attack a woman for performing a religious act in private is an example of the escalation of violence targeted against women and against religious pluralists in Israel. We at IRAC are pushing the Israeli police to take this investigation seriously.” She added, “Noa, a member of women of the wall, is expected to join us tomorrow for Rosh Chodesh Sivan.”
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Raz, a Conservative Jew, is a member of women of the wall. The group has sparked outrage within ultra-Orthodox circles for its monthly Rosh Chodesh prayer service for women at the Western Wall. In March, as the group began its service, haredi men threw chairs at them.
The Israeli Religious Action Center has asked the Beersheba police to label the attack as a hate crime, after Raz filed a report with authorities on Wednesday.
The executive director of women of the wall, Anat Hoffman, characterized the assault as not being isolated but instead part of a growing trend towards creating a threatening environment for women who want to pray openly.
The incident “should not be seen as an isolated incident but as taking place within an atmosphere of growing violence toward and intimidation of women who seek to pray freely and equally, Hoffman told JTA.
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The chairperson of the women of the wall prayer group Anat Hoffman was released from police custody on Monday afternoon, after being taken in for questioning for allegedly defying the High Court ruling outlawing women from reading from the Torah at the Western Wall.
women of the wall Public Relations Director Michelle Handelman told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that Hoffman was not reading from the Torah, but only holding it, which is not against the law according to the ruling.
The statement also claimed that the law is enforced in a discriminatory manner against the women of the wall. Every month the women of the wall are spit on, pushed and humiliated and nobody is arrested for that.
To read the original article in Jerusalem Post,click her
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A day after Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of the women of the wall prayer group, was detained for holding a Torah scroll at the Kotel, the Knesset Lobby for Civil Egalitarianism and Pluralism held a preplanned discussion Tuesday on the freedom of all Jewish streams to pray at the Western Wall.
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The arrest of Anat Hoffman for carrying a Torah scroll publicly at the Western Wall last week as she participated in the Rosh Hodesh prayers held monthly by “women of the wall” as well as the proposed Rotem conversion bill that would have granted a Haredi Chief Rabbinate exclusive oversight over all conversion matters had left hundreds of thousands of Jews with feelings of sorrow and anger. These acts were tantamount to a declaration of war by zealots in governmentally sanctioned positions of power against liberal religious Jews in particular and Diaspora Jewry in general.
Admittedly, my gloom has been in part lifted by the tactical decision of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel Natan Sharansky to delay consideration for the time being of the Rotem bill in the Knesset.
This desired outcome needs to be impressed with all candor upon those who are our Israeli sisters and brothers, and divisive fights such as those brought on by the Rotem bill should be avoided at almost all cost just as room for the type of religious expression Anat Hoffman and women of the wall seek should be protected by the government as the State of Israel strives to fulfill its mandate as a democratic and Jewish nation.
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Twenty years ago, women of the wall, the religious activist group of which Hoffman is chairwoman, petitioned Israel's Supreme Court for the right to worship freely at the Kotel, in the manner of Orthodox Jewish men. They asked, in other words, for authorization to pray as a group, their voices raised, while wearing prayer shawls and reading from the Torah. Meeting in supplication at the start of every Hebrew month, they were — and still are — assailed with curses and hard objects, hurled across the partition that separates ladies and men at the site. Customarily, women at the Kotel pray individually and in silence. (See pictures of Israel.)
The court ultimately ruled against them. After a lengthy legal battle, it determined in 2003 that women are not permitted to read from the Torah or wear tallitot, fringed pray shawls traditional to men, at the Western Wall on the grounds that it might disrupt public order. Instead, they may hold services any way they like at the adjacent Robinson's Arch, a monument set in an archaeological garden tucked just out of view. The 1967 Protection of Holy Places Law that governs the Kotel bars holding a religious ceremony that is not according to local custom. Israel's Chief Rabbinate, its supreme Jewish religious governing body, and Religious Affairs Ministry have interpreted that as Orthodox custom. The definition stands.
But though they sympathize with liberal Jews in that growing crisis, most of women of the wall's 106 members are themselves Orthodox. Jewish law mandates that women are exempt from performing what are called positive, time-bound mitzvot, or commandments that are to be carried out at specific intervals, such as the wearing of the tallit. Opinion, even among Orthodox leaders, differs as to whether women may, in keeping with religious law, waive this exemption. But even among those who agree that they can, many rabbis maintain that to pray in such a way at the Wall would be an impermissible departure from tradition. Custom is much harder to fight than regulation, says Hoffman. The wall has been in Israeli hands for 43 years. women of the wall has been around for 21 years. When will I become custom? (See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East.)
That is the question that prompted Hoffman to slip her exposed Torah past security, a scroll that had previously only ever seen the women's side of the Wall from the inside of a dark duffel bag. She is said to have only been carrying the holy book, not reading from it as is illegal. An investigation into her case is still underway. In Israel state forces — the police, the courts, the municipalities — have somehow become servants of only one stream of Judaism, says Hoffman, who was fined $1,300 and banned from visiting the Western Wall for thirty days as a result of July's run-in. The secular police of the democracy are under pressure to stop us. And they are completely out of their jurisdiction. This is their second female arrest in two years: in 2009, Israeli medical student Nofrat Frenkel was the first woman in the country to be detained during prayers at the Kotel for publicly wrapping herself in a tallit.
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the religious authority who has overseen the Wall for nearly fifteen years, shares that sentiment, but has come to a radically different conclusion. The Kotel belongs to everyone, and so it needs to be run according to what is mutual between us, not what separates us, says Rabinowitz, who was notably absent from the Knesset gathering. What is common to the diverse worshippers who visit the site, he stresses, is the custom of the Wall. That is why the Supreme Court came to the decision it did. If the women of the wall would like the state to be more liberal, this is not the place to voice that opinion. This not a political place. A common criticism of the women's group is that its members are motivated by a desire to make a political statement, not a sincere wish to pray.
It is likely that a mix of politics and prayer brought the women to the stretch of coarse, white limestone, the last remnant of the ancient Jewish temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., this week. August 11 marked the first day of the Hebrew month of Elul, when it is customary to blow the shofar, or ram's horn. Hoffman has sounded the first blasts, meant to begin the process of ushering in the Jewish High Holidays, on the group's behalf since its founding in 1988. This year she was absent, her restraining order still in effect. So was the shofar, which was confiscated by police and only returned to women of the wall upon their departure to Robinson's Arch. But upwards of one hundred members and supporters came to show their solidarity in the spirit of the soldiers who reached the Wall 43 years ago and, singing the Israeli national anthem, wept for victory. We are going to take back what most Israelis have given up for lost, Hoffman says. If we can get pluralism at the Kotel, we can get it anywhere. This is where we're going to win our liberation.
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In attempt to counter those who accuse them of being extremists, women of the wall — composed of women who gather once a month for a prayer service at the Western Wall — recently asked women around the world to send in photographs of themselves reading from or holding a Torah. The campaign’s goal: Get 10,000 women to send these images (via the organization’s website), along with a letter of solidarity, to political and religious leaders in Israel.
The letter implores: “We ask you to open your eyes and see what is ordinary every place else in the world: women embracing Torah, reading from the Torah, rejoicing with the Torah and learning from the Torah. We ask that you see and be blind no more to the injustice of religious oppression.”
The campaign follows the June arrest of women of the wall chair Anat Hoffman for the crime of “praying with a Sefer Torah,” according to a spokesman for Israeli police. Hoffman insisted that she was not praying with the Torah, but rather holding it as she walked from the Kotel plaza to the section of the wall where the group is allowed to hold its service.
Already, women from around the world, daughters, mothers and grandmothers, alone and in groups, have sent in pictures of themselves with a Torah, to show their support for women of the wall.
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Some 20 years after they first wrapped themselves in prayer shawls at Judaism's holiest site, the women of the wall (WOW) were the subject of much criticism during the Sephardic chief rabbi's weekly Saturday evening sermon
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Police on Wednesday arrested a woman who was praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, due to the fact that she was wrapped in a prayer shawl (tallit). The woman was visiting the site with the religious women's group women of the wall to take part in the monthly Rosh Hodesh prayer
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Police detained a woman from the women of the wall (WOW) movement Wednesday after she donned a prayer shawl and held a Torah scroll at the Western Wall compound in violation of a court ruling
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As they do at the start of every month, Israel’s women of the wall went to the Kotel on Wednesday to celebrate Rosh Chodesh
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In honor of the new Jewish month of Kislev, I joined my mom at women of the wall this morning. women of the wall is an organization that has existed for more than twenty years and meets monthly on Rosh Hodesh, the start of each Jewish month
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Video:women of the wall, December 18th, 2009
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The leader of women of the wall, a group of women who gather monthly to pray at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, was questioned by police, fingerprinted, and told that she may be charged with a felony for violating the rules of conduct at what is considered Judaism’s most sacred site
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The campaign against women of the wall steps up. Yet learned that chairman of the feminist Jewish worship group, Anat Hoffman, was investigated Wednesday by the police on suspicions of violating a legal directive and of rebellion following a minyan - or prayer quorum - she and her colleagues held three weeks ago – the start of the Hebrew month of Tevet – in the Western Wall pavilion
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The Israeli police’s recent interrogation of women of the wall leader Anat Hoffman and member Nofrat Frenkel “opens a new and ominous chapter in intra-Jewish relations,” The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism declared in a sharply worded statement released January 11
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JERUSALEM -- The Conservative synagogue movement is launching a campaign to protest the recent questioning and possible prosecution of a leader of the group women of the wall
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Haredi men hurled epithets at a gathering of women of the wall members on Monday, screaming “Nazis!” and “You caused the Holocaust!” as the 200 or so mostly female worshipers took part in the group’s monthly prayer vigil at the Western Wall
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The chairperson of the women of the wall prayer group Anat Hoffman was released from police custody on Monday afternoon, after being taken in for questioning for allegedly defying the High Court ruling outlawing women from reading from the Torah at the Western Wall
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A day after Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of the women of the wall prayer group, was detained for holding a Torah scroll at the Kotel, the Knesset Lobby for Civil Egalitarianism and Pluralism held a preplanned discussion Tuesday on the freedom of all Jewish streams to pray at the Western Wall
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women of the wall recently asked women around the world to send in photographs of themselves reading from or holding a Torah.
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