Last June, Forward editor Jane Eisner participated in a private roundtable discussion at the Israeli Presidential Conference in Jerusalem about Israel’s Jewish identity. What came out of the talks was the sense that Jews in Israel and in the Diaspora face a similar challenge — how to be a modern people in a modern world…
Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of Women of the Wall, is the clear winner of Haaretz’s Person of the Year poll conducted over the past week on Haaretz’s Facebook page in English. Hoffman, buttressed by an organized voting drive waged by her many supporters, garnered the largest portion of the vote. Following far behind in second place…
It was a first in quite some time: The Women of the Wall held a prayer service at the Western Wall and got to worship, sing and even dance at the holiest site in Judaism largely unperturbed. Unlike their controversial “rosh hodesh” service marking the start of each new month in the Jewish calendar, the…
Minister of Jerusalem and Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett made an attempt to reconcile Diaspora Jews and released a letter to World Jewry ahead of the new Jewish year explaining his plan to resolve the ongoing dispute over the rights of non-Orthodox Jews, including women, to pray at the Western Wall according to their customs. According…
A lengthy piece in the New Republic asserts — or, more accurately, hopes — that “an unlikely alliance between Orthodox and progressive women will save Israel from fundamentalism.” The latter word, of course, is intended to refer to traditional Orthodox Judaism. Heavy on anecdotes about Haredi crazies harassing sympathetic women, the piece, titled “The Feminists…
People like to frame Women of the Wall’s struggle in terms of Jewish religious pluralism. That approach is mistaken, and a confluence of events this week reminds us of that fact. WoW’s fight is for women’s rights, civil rights and equal rights. It occurred to me how important it is to regard WoW’s struggle in…
Religious Services Minister Naftali Bennett hailed Sunday’s completion of a large platform for non-Orthodox prayer at the southernmost portion of the Western Wall as a history-making event. But the Women of the Wall, who have led the fight for non-Orthodox prayer at the Kotel, derided the new platform as “a sunbathing deck that overlooks the…
The Women of the Wall on Sunday launched a 24-hour sit-in at the Western Wall in protest against an impending plan to bar the group from praying as it sees fit at the holy site. Israel’s cabinet secretary presented a plan on Sunday that aims to resolve the ongoing dispute over the rights of non-Orthodox…
