Bonna Devora Haberman, the founder of Women of the Wall, a group pressing for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall, has died. Haberman, a Canadian-born scholar, author and activist who lived in Israel and the United States, died Tuesday of cancer, The Jerusalem Post reported. Haberman taught at Harvard, Brandeis and the Hebrew University of…
For the second time in less than two months, a feminist prayer group has succeeded in bringing a Torah scroll into the women’s section of the Western Wall, in defiance of existing regulations at the Jewish holy site in Jerusalem. This morning, an organization known as Original Women of the Wall held a prayer service…
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…
A request by Women of the Wall to hold a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony in the women’s section of the holy site was denied. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbinic authority of the Western Wall and holy places, denied its request, Women of the Wall said in a statement Sunday. According to the group, Rabinowitz said the…
It’s not often we get an “aww” moment courtesy of Sarah Silverman, but this definitely qualifies. The comedian took to Twitter on Monday to share a video of her sister, Reform rabbi Susan Silverman, greeting her adoptive son Adar for the first time (Bonus: shots of Sarah Silverman as a proud auntie!) Check out @RabbaSusan’s…
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,…
Are you Jewish, Israeli and worried you won’t be able to marry under the auspices of the Chief Rabbinate? Anat Hoffman has a solution for you. The Women of the Wall leader has put out a call for a cruise ship that would allow Israelis to have extraterritorial weddings. “I am seeking a large used…
