Photo Credit: Hadas Parush/Flash 90

Dr. Ella Kanner (Ph.D.) is an Orthodox member of the Women of the Wall. Her Ph.D. is in Gender Studies. Personally, I hate it when people use the word “gender” because they think it’s nicer than the simple word “sex,” but who listens?

I looked it up. The Tel Aviv University Gender Studies program combines studies from the departments of Humanities, Law, Social Sciences, and Arts and offers a comprehensive multidisciplinary study of women’s history, geographical environment and planning, representation in the arts and in culture at large, women’s position vis-à-vis cultural and political institutions, as well as other aspects of women’s lives and experiences. The program also specializes in classical and contemporary feminist theories.

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I wrote a funny, condescending line here and I chose to erase it. Who am I to tell people what they should study? OK, OK, the joke had to do with failing the class and having to take remedial gender studies. Happy?

The women in the picture came together at Dr. Kanner’s house in Petah Tikvah for an official celebration of bringing a Torah scroll into her home.

Dr. Kanner describes herself as a feminist activist for women and human rights and an internet activist. She is part of the Petach Tikva Modern Orthodox community.

She once told Ynet: “And that’s what we want as women: Equality in its very simple sense. The Women of the Wall present feminine comradeship in their joint prayer. A group of women praying together – Orthodox, Reform and Conservative – out of solidarity, and of course out of the ability of each woman to pray to God in her own way.”

Years ago, she organized a photography show called “Behind the Mechitza,” images shot by women in the ladies’ section in shul, on weekdays, of course. She wanted men who saw those images to get a sense of what it was like to be an absentee participant.

For the record, my gripe with Women of the Wall begins and ends at the Kotel. And not because my opinion is that they shouldn’t pray there and dance and sing and ululate, but because the halachic authority at the place has ordered so. You can’t openly and brazenly defy the appointed legal authority at any location and call yourself a person of faith.

Away from the Kotel, I enjoyed getting a peek at Dr. Kanner and her friends enjoying the Torah. I even applaud them. The obvious joy she shows in holding the sefer Torah is exactly how I feel in shul when they give me Hagbaha (lifting the Torah before rolling it up and putting the cover back on it). I’m a huge Torah kisser. I can’t stand it when people in shul touch the Torah with their talit, or their hand, or even worse — with their siddur. A sefer Torah is meant to be hugged and kissed.

I was delighted to see that Dr. Kanner appears to know about hugging and kissing the Torah.

Bet you didn’t expect that from this angry old man.

Photo by Hadas Parush/Flash 90
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Yori Yanover has been a working journalist since age 17, before he enlisted and worked for Ba'Machane Nachal. Since then he has worked for Israel Shelanu, the US supplement of Yedioth, JCN18.com, USAJewish.com, Lubavitch News Service, Arutz 7 (as DJ on the high seas), and the Grand Street News. He has published Dancing and Crying, a colorful and intimate portrait of the last two years in the life of the late Lubavitch Rebbe, (in Hebrew), and two fun books in English: The Cabalist's Daughter: A Novel of Practical Messianic Redemption, and How Would God REALLY Vote.