By Miriam Farber

8th grade: On my first trip to Israel, with my grandparents' synagogue, we visited the Kotel on Shabbat. I started to write a note to stick in between the stones, and a security guard came over and told me to stop writing.
11th grade: When I was in Israel for a semester in high school on EIE (Eisendrath International Exchange), we went to the Kotel for our first Shabbat in Israel. I wore a kippah, even though my classmates and teacher told me it wasn't a good idea. I looked through the bookshelves in the women's section for a prayerbook that was "mine," and another woman handed me an Artscroll siddur.

On subsequent trips to the Kotel - the Western Wall, the remains of the 2nd Temple closest to its holiest spot, the Holy of Holies - I felt bored, squished, frustrated, and unspiritual (for an example, read my post after being at the Kotel in September.) For years I had heard of the prayer group Women of the Wall, a women's group that prays on the women's side of the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh (the beginning of the Hebrew month). They have a long and contentious history, with Supreme Court battles, discrimination, and harassment, but I was excited to finally have the opportunity to join them in prayer and pray at the Kotel in a way that felt authentic to who am I as a Jew.

Last Rosh Hodesh, I woke up early and shared cabs with some other students from Pardes to the Kotel, where we joined with Women of the Wall and a group of women from Congregation B'nai Jeshurun in NYC. My friends and fellow students Lauren and Evelyn led services. For the first time ever, I wore a tallit at the Kotel. I was scared; I had heard many stories about rocks, heckling from men and women who were offended by what they saw as a desecration of their holy site, even physical assaults, but I felt safe surrounded by this community of women. Singing Hallel, songs of praise, out loud at the Kotel was incredibly powerful. One line in particular resonated with me: לא המתים יהללו יה, ולא כל ירדי דומה, ואנחנו נברך יה מעתה ועד עולם. הללויה The dead will not praise Yah, nor can those who go down into silence. But WE shall praise Yah, now and forever. Halleluyah! (Psalm 115: 17-18) I felt like I was really, genuinely praying at the Kotel, for the first time in a very long time.

By Khadija Bradlow, Mail & Guardian 

Anyone who's seen a Beyoncé music video can have little doubt about the allure of the female voice at full throttle. And it is said the sound of the womanly voice can overheat the male imagination.

But this depends on context. There is a vast difference between the contents of a late-night call placed to Dirty Debbie's chat line and the sounds of a woman enraptured by her prayers, no?

Apparently not. Or so say those great lovers of the female form, the monotheists. For the mere sound of the female voice is, in some places of worship, censured, measured and even gagged outright.

Presumably God's representatives on earth -- men -- are a bunch of heavy breathers, concerned not with ensuring their invocations get upstairs but with their own rumblings further down.

It's a Jewish and Muslim problem. These are faiths whose holy men have devoted tomes to analysing what women are and aren't allowed to do -- with their voices and in general. If they weren't so busy hating each other, these two Semitic cousins would find they have way more in common than they think -- especially apropos their position on the filthy gays and the even filthier women.