JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
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…
More than 2,500 people signed up to participate in a global Shema flash mob as part of a campaign to promote religious pluralism in Israel. The gatherings early Monday afternoon came two days after Conservative Jewish congregations were asked to dedicate a recitation of the Shema to the topic as well. The actions were a…
Israel’s Declaration of Independence provides that “The State of Israel…will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex” and “will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture.” Last week, officials of the Jerusalem police violated Anat Hoffman’s most basic civil and human rights…
Last week’s episode was hardly the first time Israeli police stopped activist Anat Hoffman while she was leading a women’s prayer service at the Western Wall in violation of Israeli law. But this time, police actually arrested Hoffman – a first, she says – and the incident appears to be galvanizing liberal Jewish groups in…
Reform Jewish leaders are calling for an investigation following reports that an Israeli colleague was roughed up by police after leading a women’s prayer group at the Western Wall. Reform leaders in the United States said Thursday that they have spoken with Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, about the incident involving Anat Hoffman, executive…
The Anti-Defamation League described a plan by evangelical pastors in Kansas to build a replica of the Western Wall as part of an anti-abortion shrine as “an outrageous affront to the Jewish people.” The International Pro-Life Memorial and National Life Center is being planned by anti-abortion activists in Wichita, which is known for its anti-abortion…
Naomi Zeveloff has a story in this week’s Forward about a full-size replica of the Western Wall in the works in Wichita, Kansas targeted towards women who have had abortions. An anti-abortion group, the Word of Life Church, is proposing to build this multimillion dollar “National Pro-Life Memorial and International Life Center” in the same…
It’s troubling enough when the more strident voices against abortion employ the language of the Holocaust in their rhetoric, but at least one can discern a tenuous link. The argument goes something like this: The Nazis considered Jews mere numbers, denied of personhood and murdered anonymously — as are, these activists contend, the millions of…
