On a sunny morning last month, I was swept into the women’s section of the Western Wall in Jerusalem in a flurry of aggression directed at the Women of the Wall, the Israeli group fighting for women’s prayer at Jerusalem’s holiest site. (JTA) One of the group’s male supporters, Charlie Kalech, was strangled and thrown…
Workers at the Western Wall removed the notes placed in the cracks by worshippers in advance of Passover. The notes were removed Wednesday morning under the supervision of the rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovich. They will be buried in the Mount of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem. The Western Wall Institute also receives tens…
Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu took his campaign against a nuclear deal with Iran to Jerusalem’s sacred Western Wall on Saturday, on the eve of his departure to Washington to address Congress on the issue. His rare pilgrimage to one of Judaism’s holiest sites was highly symbolic – and political – an apparent attempt by Netanyahu,…
illustration by Lior Zaltzman When Kay Long approached the Western Wall in Jerusalem last week, she was turned away because according to one of the Orthodox women supervising the women’s side of the Wall, Ms. Long was not a woman. In Orthodox Judaism, religious space is gendered space. Men and women are rigorously separated, not…
Kay Long poses on the Kotel plaza after being refused access to both women’s and men’s sections. (JTA) — A transgender woman was denied access to both the women’s and men’s sections of the Western Wall. Kay Long, who designs wedding dresses, evening gowns and costumes, on Monday visited the Western Wall with a friend…
Security guards at the Western Wall entrance confiscated menorahs from several women, but dozens held a candle-lighting ceremony in the women’s section. The guards said they were acting on orders from Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbinic authority of the Western Wall and holy places, the Women of the Wall organization said Thursday night in a…
Bat mitzvah girl Sasha Lutt reads from a tiny Torah scroll smuggled into the Kotel / Haaretz I am sitting in front of my computer, talking via Skype with three women in Israel — Irina Lutt, her 12-year-old daughter Sasha, and Shira Pruce — who are kicking back after a day of school and work….
(Haaretz) — Defying regulations by Western Wall rabbinic authorities, members of Women of the Wall smuggled a tiny Torah scroll into the women’s section of the Kotel Friday morning, in what the feminist prayer group said was the first reading from the Torah by women at the holy site in 25 years. The tiny scroll,…
