June 7, 2013 Women Of the Wall

Allison (Stan's daughter) and I went to the Western Wall to join the Women of the Wall who come there monthly for the past 30 years to celebrate the New Moon (Rosh Chodesh), a traditionally women's holiday. The women pray in their own style which is much opposed by the ultra-Orthodox

who make it a tense situation; in their tradition, women are neither seen nor heard in religious observance (not that the Western Wall is a synagogue although they debate this); consequently few orthodox women even go to synagogue services—which may be the desired effect. The Women of the Wall wear tallitot (prayer shawls) and some wear tefillin and non-traditional head coverings. They pray and sing aloud and read the torah from a book—they have sometimes used a scroll but this time did not; in these ways they break with ultra-Orthodox tradition.

The ultra-Orthodox, both men and women, become so crazy that security is dense—made possible by an Israel Supreme Court decision that Women of the Wall have the right to congregate there. The Women come from all other strains of Judaism—reform, conservative, reconstructionist, orthodox.

Today, the Women were bussed in; we did not know this so we almost couldn't get in. We finally followed two women who after speaking with several people found a man in uniform who said, “I'll take you in.” He did. We later found out he was the police commander.

The service lasted 1 ½ hours. We all stood. Even at 8am it was hot. There were 200-300 women there so it was also crowded. I am not religious and don't wear religious garb. But I was there to support religious expression and diversity.

For those who haven't seen the wall: there is a large section for men. On their right are opaque wooden separators and then the women's section, which is much smaller. The Women of the Wall stood to the right of that women's section separated by barricades attended by women police and soldiers. By the way, the uniformed women had an array of skin colors including black, Ethiopian, Arabic, and blond European. Just to the right of the Women on the wooden covered staircase which goes to the Dome of the Rock/Al Aksa Mosque area were police observers communicating with those on the ground. Between and behind the Women and the plaza were non-ultra-orthodox men who support the Women of the Wall. Stan was with them. They tried to coordinate their prayer service with that of the Women. Occasionally ultra-Orthodox school girls would hold up a sign, “Provocation women—you are making a new religion.” (Secular education is not an emphasis in their religious schools—hence the poor use of the first word—you want the Women to correct this? Small joke.)

At the end of the service the Women sang “Hatikva” (“The Hope”, Israel's national anthem) and walked out together. That point was very tense. Suddenly the number of police and army women seemed to greatly increase at the barricades. We were joined on the way out by the section of supportive men. All in all the authorities did a good job of crowd control. I don't think it's always been this way. In an ugly earlier part of this process, Women of the Wall have been arrested. The Ultra-Orthodox threw things at them. Justice and the court system intervened in a positive way.

Most of the action was in Stan's section—You'll have to read his part of the Blog when he writes it.