Photo Credit: Flash90

I deconstructed the latest notice from Women of the Wall (they’ve taken me off their email blast list, so I had to go to their website to find it – the things I do for you…). The headline was “Double Bat Mitzvah at the Kotel- No Protests and No Torah.” The word “Mitzvah” was mentioned 3 times, each time as part of the term Bat Mitzvah. The word “Mitzvot” was not mentioned, nor was the word “God.”

The reason Jewish men pray, above anything else, is because we’re told to do so by our Rabbinic tradition. We may not do it very well, we may be late to shul or skip the service altogether and daven at home, or skip davening at home – but when we do, it’s because we were commanded.

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The mitzvot are the system of our liberation from our egos. We substitute God’s will for our will, as best we can. With that in mind, take a look at the WOW text from Friday:

Two Israeli girls celebrated their bat mitzvah with Women of the Wall on Friday. “Unfortunately, after months of studying, learning the Torah reading and its blessings, the young girls were denied the right afforded to their male counterparts, the right to read from a Torah scroll at their bat mitzvah.”

The language of civil rights seems so foreign in the religious context. Look at this sentence: “For twenty-five years Women of the Wall has struggled for religious freedom and women’s rights at the Western Wall.” Once a month, for a quarter century, these warrior women struggle at the Wall. It’s kind of comical to have a regularly scheduled struggle. And to be saying with an open face that it’s about “freedom” and “rights.”

Freedom from what? From the oppression of having to obey the rabbi in charge at the Kotel?

Seriously, whom do Women of the Wall serve?

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride / You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side / You may be working in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair / You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir.

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed / You’re gonna have to serve somebody / Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord / But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.


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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.