Anat Hoffman was arrested at the Western Wall on Tuesday night for saying the Sh’ma Israel, Judaism’s central proclamation of faith, out loud at Israel’s holiest site. “I was saying Sh’ma Israel and arrested for it. It’s just unbelievable,” she said in an interview from her bathtub, where she was soaking limbs bruised from being…
Jerusalem Police detained an American woman for nearly four hours on Thursday for wearing a tallit, or prayer shawl, “incorrectly” at the Western Wall. Deb Houben, a native of Boston, was taken aside by police after concluding a prayer service celebrating the beginning of the Hebrew month with 65 other people from Women of the…
The embattled Women of the Wall prayer group has a new coalition of allies, in the form of a group called Rabbis for Women of the Wall. Women of the Wall is a group of Israeli and other Jewish women (many originally from North America) who have long fought for the right to pray as…
Jerusalem police are recommending prosecution for Anat Hoffman, the Women of the Wall leader who was arrested in July while carrying a Torah in the Western Wall plaza. Read The Sisterhood’s interview with Hoffman — her first following the arrest — here and view our slideshow of women around the world holding or reading from…
In attempt to counter those who accuse them of being extremists, Women of the Wall — composed of women who gather once a month for a prayer service at the Western Wall — recently asked women around the world to send in photographs of themselves reading from or holding a Torah. The campaign’s goal: Get…
The monthly gathering of the prayer group Women of the Wall Wednesday morning — the first since last month’s arrest of the group’s leader for the crime of “praying with a Sefer Torah” — was a study in contrasts. The sound of women’s voices singing psalms of praise — the Rosh Chodesh Hallel prayers —…
Forward alumna and current Tablet editor in chief Alana Newhouse has an incisive op-ed in today’s New York Times today, warning that Israel’s Rotem Bill, which would enshrine official approval of conversion to Judaism in the hands of ultra-Orthodox rabbis, will lead to a split between Israel and the Diaspora. She’s right, of course, though…
Watch the video of the July 12 arrest of Anat Hoffman, the chair of Women of the Wall, as she and other members of the group make their way from the Western Wall plaza to Robinson’s Arch: The Sisterhood conducted the first interview with Hoffman following her arrest. Read it here.
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