Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Western Wall Orthodox Rabbi Gets Threatening Letters Over Women’s Prayer

Israeli police are investigating threats to hurt the rabbi in charge of Jerusalem’s Western Wall if he does not allow a Jewish women’s prayer group equal worship rights at the holy site, a police spokesman said on Monday.

Micky Rosenfeld said that Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch received the letters late last week. An Israeli television station showed one of the notes including a picture of a pistol in the lower right hand corner.

The Women of the Wall group has angered ultra-Orthodox Jews by wearing prayer shawls and reading from holy scriptures at the Western Wall, a revered remnant of the Biblical Jewish Temple.

Orthodox Jewish tradition reserves such rituals for men, and some more conservative rabbis have vowed to battle a plan devised by a former cabinet minister to try to accommodate the women’s more liberal approach to prayer.

Women of the Wall denied any involvement in the letters to the rabbi, saying in a statement it was “saddened” by the remarks.

Last month threatening slogans were daubed on walls near the home of group member Peggy Cidor, one of which admonished her “your time is up.”

The prayer issue is at the heart of a social struggle between Israel’s secular majority and an ultra-Orthodox minority in a country where most religious ritual and institutions that oversee marriage, divorce and burial are controlled by Orthodox authorities.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.