Women are used to being silenced. Women are used to having their ideas belittled and their success made to seem unimportant. Today I went to the Kotel to join Women of the Wall — whose only goal was to make our voices heard—in prayer, at the holiest site in modern Judaism. I joined a service…
A Western Wall bat mitzvah on Monday morning was interrupted by whistling protesters who sought to disrupt the coming-of-age ceremony. Twelve-year-old Hod Hasharon native Noa Brenner celebrated her bat mitzvah at the monthly prayer service of Women of the Wall, a feminist group advocating for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall holy site. According to…
A right-wing Orthodox group announced a protest against Women of the Wall at the feminist group’s upcoming prayer service next week with a dramatic video calling on supporters to end the “debasement” of the Western Wall. Women of the Wall said that video “all but calls for violence against Women of the Wall,” in a…
I was in Jerusalem for a week last month, and I never once went to the Kotel. This was unusual for me. On my many prior stays in Israel, the ancient stones of the Western Wall were like a magnet, drawing me close and stripping away my journalistic skepticism, leaving me feeling a little more…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — The Original Women of the Wall group held a prayer service in the women’s section of the Western Wall that included a Torah scroll. It was the first time that women have succeeded in bringing in and reading from a Torah scroll at the Western Wall since an interim Supreme Court ruling said…
Member of feminist prayer group Women of the Wall and their supporters were asked to submit to body searches at the Western Wall Jewish holy site on Thursday morning, in apparent violation of a recent Israeli High Court order against such searches. According to the group’s director, Lesley Sachs, about 50 men and 20 women…
When I was invited to sing in Israel this past Hanukkah, my heart filled with joy at the chance to celebrate the Holiday of Light in the City of Eternal Light. I went in search of truth and to return to my home of homes. But going home is never as easy as you think…
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously made a distinction between sacred space and sacred time. Jews – who for much of history were itinerant, kicked out of one country, and expelled from another – sanctified time, unlike Christians, who sanctified space. Sacred space took a back seat to sacred time and Shabbat, he argued, no matter…
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