As if things weren’t difficult enough for women who want to pray or be in any way connected with their loved ones’ bar mitzvahs at the Western Wall, Israel’s outgoing Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, has proposed a mechitzah with one-way glass. The current mechitzah at the Kotel is, I would guess, between eight and…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly has asked the Jewish Agency to come up with a solution for non-Orthodox women’s groups who want to pray at the Western Wall. Netanyahu asked Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky to examine the issue, the Associated Press reported citing an unnamed Israeli government official. The AP quoted Jewish Agency…
Two leading thinkers went head to head on the next best step for Women of the Wall regarding the quest to make Judaism’s holiest site a place where women can pray any way they want — even if that means wearing a tallit or tefillin. Yossi Klein Halevi and Rabbi Rachel Beit-Halachmi, both American-born scholars…
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…
Nearly every month, it seems, there is troubling news relating to the status of women in Israel. Late last year it was women forced to sit at the back of public busses, and then Haredim attacking schoolgirls in Beit Shemesh for being insufficiently modest. In October the leader of Women of the Wall was arrested…
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…
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