The Orthodox rabbi who oversees the Western Wall has vowed not to soften his confrontational approach toward Jewish women seeking to pray at the holy site in Jerusalem. On Friday, police detained four women for wearing prayer shawls as they tried to start a prayer service. There have been numerous similar incidents in the past….
In what those involved are calling an escalation of the war against women who pray at Judaism’s holiest site, four women were forced away from the Kotel and detained by police Friday morning when new rules were put in place just before they arrived with Women of the Wall. The rules prohibited women from entering…
Sitting in his office 20 feet above the Western Wall Plaza, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz is unperturbed by the simmering tensions below. For years, Israeli and American Jewish groups have agitated for greater religious freedom at the Wall, which currently allows for only Orthodox worship. Occasionally the outrage boils over. In October, Israeli police arrested Anat…
Six women were detained by Jerusalem police for wearing prayer shawls as more than 100 women gathered for the monthly Women of the Wall service at the Western Wall. The detainments Thursday, on the first day of the Hebrew month Kislev, follow the arrest at last month’s service of Women of the Wall leader Anat…
The Western Wall is for all Jews, the rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, said even as he blasted women’s protests there as ‘provocations.’ “The Western Wall is the place of prayer for every individual in the nation, and as such, it must carefully safeguard the individual’s right to privacy and respect during the…
A Jewish Agency committee has adopted a resolution calling for a “satisfactory approach” to prayer at the Western Wall. The resolution passed Tuesday during The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Board of Governors meeting in Tel Aviv, reads in part: “Whereas Jewish women and men, of all streams of Judaism, desire the opportunity to pray at…
Ah, the holy tears of Jewish women who weep while praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Not holy, says the holy site’s chief rabbi. Instead, says Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, women’s tears are responsible for the high level of fecal contamination found in the prayer books at the Wall, or kotel, even those that are…
I am the first to admit that there are many people out there with greater and deeper Jewish knowledge than I. Nonetheless, one thing I am pretty sure of is that women and men stood together at Sinai, and that wives walked side-by-side with their husbands as they made pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot…
דער באַגריף, ייִדישע אױטאָנאָמיע אין גלות — הײַנט פּאָפּולער בײַ קריטיקער פֿון ציוניזם — איז היסטאָריש ניט געװען קײן דערפֿאָלג.
