It’s starting again, like it does every month, for the Women of the Kotel – can you feel the excitement? “Rosh Hodesh Av at the Kotel 2013″ is coming, says their email invitation (mind you, it’s not Av, 5773—too complicated), July 8, at 7:00 AM.

The month of Av, when two temples were burned down to the ground – how very appropriate.

If you would like to attend Rosh Hodesh Av Prayers at the Kotel with Women of the Wall and receive security updates, please fill out the form below and we will be in touch.

If you wish to sign up for the free minibus to the Kotel from Gan Hapa’amon, use the check box below.

We want to do our utmost to ensure everyone a safe and meaningful prayer at the Kotel.

Well, not everyone, of course, because, judging by last months complaints from non-WOW Jerusalemites, public bus service to the Kotel that goes through Haredi neighborhoods will be suspended until mid-day. It won’t be official, it would just be a quiet arrangement between cops and the bus company—allegedly.

Now the scoop, which should send a thrill through the delicate spines of all the WOW ladies: “Women of the Wall gear up for the next struggle: Reading Torah at the Kotel.”

It’s Revolutionary techniques 101: every time you reach a goal – start looking for the next one. A revolution that runs out of provocative goals to achieve might as well fold up the barricades and go home.

Also, a revolution that stops in its tracks won’t be doing so good on the fund raising front. Ya gotta remember the bottom line.

So, after receiving permission from two lower courts to pray while clad in talitot and teffilin by the Kotel, men and women together, and after it became clear that neither the police nor the AG had the stomach for an appeal to the high court, you’d think the WOW would rejoice and give thanks to their Father or Mother in Heaven and sing out a great Rosh Chodesh Hallelujah.

No such luck. Now they need to unfold a Torah scroll out there, in the open air by the Kotel, and endow everyone in the plaza with their lovely voices.

Thank God, the Rosh Chodesh reading is relatively short. The predictable Haredi screaming will eventually die down, the WOW will once again appear victorious compared to those uncouth haters. So, you understand why it is absolutely essential that, after all these many months of not reading the Torah in the open, now it must be done.

They wrote a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and are urging their supporters to send a copy to him:

Shalom, It is with great respect and love for the State of Israel that we write today. The lack of freedom for women at the Western Wall simply cannot continue. Women in Israel deserve full and equal rights, including freedom of religion and expression at the Western Wall. For 24 years Women of the Wall have prayed and struggled for their full freedom of religion at the Western Wall. The women have cooperated with police and the courts. Women of the Wall have been full partners in each of the government committees that have been appointed throughout the years, especially the most recent committees headed by Natan Sharansky and now, Tzvi Hauser. In April 2013, the District Court of Jerusalem reestablished the legality of women’s prayer at the Kotel in Judge Sobel’s decision that the prayer of Women of the Wall in no way violates the law or disturbs the peace. He declared that the local custom of the Western Wall should be defined by the most pluralist, inclusive terms. Yet despite the women’s cooperation and the court’s assurances, a regulation from July 2010 written by ultra-Orthodox Rabbi and Authority of the Western Wall and Holy Places Shmuel Rabinowitz, prohibits men and women from entering the Kotel Plaza with a torah, thus permanently denying all women access to a Torah Scroll. This regulation reminds Jews worldwide of the very dark days in Jewish history when we were forbidden to pray, read and study Torah. It is inconceivable that in 2013 in Israel Jewish women are refused access to the Torah at a public holy site in Israel. We ask that you intervene immediately to guarantee women from all over the world and Israel the full equal rights at the Western Wall. B’chavod Rav (With deep respect)…

In other words, this is a letter of complaint to the PM, about the ruling of one of his civil servants, the rabbi of the Kotel, who wouldn’t let them bring a Sefer Torah into the plaza. What they’re asking for is that the PM pick up the phone to his employee and order him to right away rescind his regulation. Otherwise…

Otherwise it would be just like those dark times in our history, when Jews were not allowed to pray, read and study the Torah.

If they were to raise their eyes from the wall right in front of them, to the other, higher plaza just 20 feet or so above their heads, they could be treated to the sight of a place where Jews right now, are not allowed not just to bring a Sefer Torah, but if they’re suspected of praying, immediately the cops are called in to grab them off the site.

The WOW have nothing to say about that. They see no similarity between their case, where they’ve twisted the arm of the law, with the glad hearted collaboration of two lower court judges – and the case of the complete prohibition on Jewish prayer by men, women and children on the Temple Mount.

Wanna’ do something subversive? Here’s what I did:

I went to their petition page, entered my personal data, and replaced their text with the highlighted text below. I also changed the subject to: Please Let Jews Pray on Temple Mount.

Mr. Prime Minister, please don’t allow patriotic Jews to be humiliated by the Arabs who rule the Temple Mount with your permission. Please let us pray there, in the areas that are halakhically permitted, and if need be please provide us with police protection as equal citizens of your country.

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Back around the year 2000, I was invited by my very good friend, Rabbi Judi Abrams, to come on board a new project of the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR), a comprehensive prayer book that would streamline and organize the countless versions of Reform prayer books that had been out there.

I use the title Rabbi in Judi’s case, even though it isn’t the policy of our publication to use this honorarium for non-Orthodox clergy, much less women clergy, because she has earned it. She is one of my non-Orthodox friends who truly love the Talmud and know how to learn. So, when she invited me to be the designer of the new prayer book, I grabbed it. I needed the money—this was at the bursting phase of the first Internet bubble, and all my online clients had been massacred. But the project also offered me an interesting fig leaf, which I could use to justify my collaboration: this was going to be the first Reform siddur in history to include the full Sh’ma Israel reading, all three passages.

Previous siddurim have omitted the middle passage, which warns us what would happen if we don’t obey the commandments. Those earlier siddurim also omitted the third passage, about the tzitzit, but that part introduces a reminder of how to keep the commandments in our everyday life—so that without the middle part it’s kind of pointless.

During my two years, on and off, working on the siddur project, I began to develop a theory that the Reform, despite their anti-halachic, or a-halachic stance, were still inside the rabbinic umbrella. Based on my encounters with the more learned in the movement (I also met many stereotypical Reform rabbis who couldn’t fight their way out of a paper bag made of blatts of gemora), I began to think of the Reform, especially the rank and file, as amaratzim — (lingo for Amei Ha’aratzot) the equivalent of the uneducated masses at the time just after the destruction of the second temple. The sages, who originally abhorred and loathed those amaratzim, once the temple was gone and the dark Diaspora had begun, started to view them as inseparable from the rest of the Jewish nation.

I felt that, despite its abysmal relationship with classical and traditional Judaism, the Reform movement was not beyond hope. And I offered, on a number of occasions, the following illustration to support my view:

We were at a large editorial meeting, discussing the texts of the Eighteen Blessings, the silent prayer or “Amida.” The Reform versions of the Amida range from ridiculously cumbersome to infuriatingly PC—compared with the traditional text, which is smooth and elegant, even in the Sephard version, which offers several alternative phrases in a number of places. No question, the Reform Amida was begging for a streamlining job.

Then one of the editors, a female clergy, suggested we add a special shmoneh-esreh blessing for our suffering LGBT brothers and sisters.

Needless to say, my little brain was working overtime trying to find justifications for that one. Was there any way that I, as an observant Jew, could lend my name to a siddur that included a special prayer for folks who break a major commandment? Might as well add a blessing for folks breaking Shabbes and another, special one, for our brothers and sisters who suffer from trichinosis. I was done for—the Yanover family would be going without fish Friday night.

But then the moderator told this nice lady: “Bring me a pasuk,” meaning offer a verse in the entire Jewish Bible that would support and illustrate the above mentioned suffering.

He spoke like a Jew. Never mind the outcome (I was let go a few months later, because of my tendency to open my big mouth to my superiors, so I never found out) – the man approached prayer from within the tradition, not as a sworn violator of the tradition. There was hope.

That episode also cost me a job with a new Haredi magazine, a competitor to Mishpacha, which hired me for a scary amount of money as senior editor—only to let me go after my boss had discovered my notes online regarding my hope for the Reform.

The Women of the Wall proved today that it’s not about the prayer, but about the politics.

While they were praying, they were also busy sending out tweets from the official Women of the Wall account (I guess they have some Kavana issues).

a horrible feeling. what a shanda to encage women at the kotel

what a frustrating, painful feeling. women in a cage at the Kotel.

When I heard, “women in a cage,” I rushed to check out the photos.

With a turn of phrase like that, I knew what I was expecting to see. Needless to say, I was disappointed, when it turned out to be nothing even close…

Let’s see what’s really going on.

Here they are at the main Kotel itself, being allowed to pray according to nearly any alternative lifestyle demands they have been promoting — with direct access to the wall at the plaza, so they can also touch the same section of the wall as everyone else can while they pray, and all the tourists can watch them.

Yet they are using SENSATIONALIST, exaggerated terminology, tweeting to the world that they were put in cages.

Put in cages!

At first I thought it was just them being whiny, but, you know what? It’s just straight out lying.

As you can see from their own photo, that it is not the case at all.

The women’s section has been divided by a standard police divider, so that part of the women’s section is designated for those women who want to pray in the traditional Jewish manner as they have been doing at the Kotel every day, and the other part dedicated to those who want to pray in their alternative fashion, wearing male accouterments, as they do once a month.

And since the Women of the Wall have been demanding to be allowed to pray at the main Kotel plaza in their non-traditional manner – and they were allowed to do so, this argument should pretty much be over.

But that obviously is not what the Women of the Wall want (that the argument should be over).

It’s not enough that they have forced their alternative method of prayer into the Kotel.

Here’s the truth of it, based on their own tweets.

They want to force their method of prayer onto to the other women at the Kotel too, including onto those who don’t want to pray that way – whether those women want it or not.

As part of their performance politics, the Women of the Wall are demanding that everyone else be subject to their methods of prayer, while they simultaneously prove that they won’t tolerate the way the other women (or men) at the Kotel want to hold their traditional prayers.

It’s a one way street for the Women of the Wall.

I am sure that within a month or two, they’ll get their way, too, and Orthodox (and non-Orthodox) women who want to pray undisturbed in the Jewish traditional manner will be made to feel very uncomfortable in their place of prayer.

And it won’t end there.

Because, as their tweets prove, this obviously isn’t about their wish to pray at the Kotel in a manner that deviates from tradition — after all, they’ve already won 95% of that (and I’m 100% convinced they’ll get permission to read from the Torah next month).

Next we’ll see petitions to the Supreme Court to completely remove the Mechitza, and allow egalitarian (mixed prayer) prayer groups.

How long until some IRAC-connected Reform rabbi demands to be allowed to play guitar on the Sabbath at the Kotel as he or she “traditionally” does in his or her Reform Temple?

This isn’t a battle about some women wanting to dress up as men like Yentyl and pray at the Kotel.

There’s no question that many of the backers of the Women of the Wall see the obliteration of Torah Judaism in public places in Israel as their ultimate goal.

The Kotel is just one of their battlefields, and the more SENSATIONAL they can make the battle sound, and the longer they can keep it going, the better it is for their camp.

 Once again we are going to witness an event this Sunday that may become violent. Innocent people may be hurt. And the negative press for religious Jews could not be much worse.

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same experiment twice and expecting different results.

I am not going to accuse anyone of being insane. But I have to wonder how rabbis who many consider to be the greatest leaders of our generation can ask their adherents to protest the next appearance at the Kotel by the Women of the Wall (WoW) and not expect it to turn violent. Even if the chances are low – is it worth the chance?

Nor can I understand the stridency by which WoW insists on making their point. Two stubborn groups at odds with each other in matters of religion is a sure prescription for confrontation. The history from which we are supposed to learn will be ignored.

As most people who have been following these events know, WoW shows up at the Kotel every Rosh Chodesh to pray by using male modalities such as wearing a Talis and Teffillin; and bringing a Sefer Torah (Torah scroll) to read from. Although last month they avoided reading from the Torah in acquiescence to a request by Religious Services Minister, Naftali Bennett – they plan to resume doing so this Sunday.

As much as I believe that many members of WoW are sincere in their desire to pray at the Kotel in this manner, I don’t think there can be any doubt that this is more about asserting feminist rights than it is about prayer (especially by WoW leaders like Anat Hoffman).  They have found a clever way of doing this by technically not violating Halacha.

But I am hard pressed to believe WoW’s leaders did not think this would upset the sensibilities of the vast majority of Jews who do come there to pray in traditional ways. If they were truly sincere only about prayer and did not want to be provocative they would have respected tradition and found an area of the Kotel that was out of the way and not as disruptive.

It is indeed provocative for WoW to act in this manner in any traditional environment. This is certainly true at the Kotel, which is so near to the place where the holy of holies existed in the Temple era.  Does their right to wear a Talis and Teffilin override  the almost certain violence it will bring to this holy place? Do they really need this ‘Mexican standoff’? Is it worth it? Do they think their stridency is what God desires of them?

I understand that some women need to do more than simply pray. They need to wrap themselves in something tangible – like a Talis and Teffilin  to boost their sense of holiness. But in the end – using a male modality to generate that feeling is not what God intends for women… or He would have mandated those artifacts for them too.

How sadly lacking are these women in their Jewish education if they cannot generate the proper feelings for prayer that millions of women over the millennia have had without those artifacts.

I can’t predict the future. But my guess is that this type of thing is so out of the mainstream that it will not stand the test of time and eventually go the way of the Dodo Bird. I have to ask, how many religious women of any denomination would opt for this method of prayer?

Which is why I have been saying that we should just ignore them. Yes they are somewhat disruptive and annoying in their once a month appearance. But it is my true belief that this monthly occurrence will not last in perpetuity. It will fizzle out.

If the Charedi world will let it.

But they apparently refuse to let it happen. They have instead declared war on these women… and insist on making a public spectacle out of it. They are going to once again show up in massive numbers at the Kotel this Sunday to pray. The claim is that they just want to show how many people do not approve of WoW’s behavior and also to physically crowd them out. The JerusalemPost quotes the Yated Ne’eman who put it this way:

“A mass prayer service will be conducted at the Western Wall in order to express the outcry of faithful Judaism against the severe injury to the holiest and most beloved place of all of the Jewish people, and in so doing to declare… that the Jewish world will not be quiet and will not be reconciled to the humiliating conspiracy to turn the remnant of our holy sanctuary into a Reform temple and a media spectacle, God forbid,”

And then they said the following:

“(Worshipers) are requested not to be dragged along after the provocations whose only purpose is to harm the community of worshipers, and to behave according to the path of the holy Torah and to sanctify God’s name.

First they approve of theYated making a provocative statement  like calling WoW’s actions a ‘humiliating conspiracy’ and then they expect protesters not to get violent. They have even asked that only married Yeshiva students should come in order to minimize the potential for physical conflict.

Sure… That’ll work! The same way it did last time they called for peaceful prayer. Which was last month.  Need I remind anyone how well that turned out for them?
I hope I’m wrong. I hope that this will turn out to be as peaceful as the organizers hope it will be. Perhaps there will even be members of WoW that will be inspired by such a massive turnout for prayer and join them. Perhaps there will be no violence or shouting names at the Women of the Wall. But I am not going to hold my breath. I tend to look at history and learn from it.

A group of some 400 Haredim on Sunday morning demonstrated against the Women of the Wall’s prayer with talit and tefilin, in defiance of the ruling of the local rabbinic authority, in the plaza in front of the Kotel.

(For the record, Israeli media sources kept referring to the place as “Judaism’s holiest site,” which is intriguing, seeing as Judaism’s holiest site is a mere 20 feet up and a couple feet eastward from that plaza.)

The Haredim carried signs that read: “Women of the Provocation, you invented a new Judaism, go find yourselves a new Kotel.”

Photo: Israel Karlitz, News24

As a preventative measure, the police closed part of the upper plaza – above the prayer plazas, to keep the protesters away from the women’s section, and all the Women of the Wall were channeled into the plaza through a passageway running below the Mugrhabi bridge (which leads up the Temple Mount) where the Women of the Wall were allowed to pray there without interruption. Also, inside the women’s section, police closed off an area with metal barricades for the Women of the Wall, so their prayer not be disturbed.

This was the way Police prepared for the monthly event, and from a law-and-order perspective it made perfect sense. If two adversary groups are planning to demonstrate at the same time, the job of the crowd control police is to make sure they never reach one another.

But that was not creating the effect that the WOW were looking for – the epic struggle images. Because, let’s face it, a revolution is like a shark – if it stops struggling it dies. And so, if the courts are now permitting them prayer, they must find someone against whom they can struggle, and a bunch of Haredim with signs 200 yards away just won’t do.

They were planning to bring a Sefer Torah this morning, but, thank God, somehow that was thwarted. The Sefer Torah will very likely be featured in the struggles to come, because the struggle can’t stop.

So, if police brutality was no longer available, the struggle today was against the injustice of separating them from their adversaries, or, they tweeted it, their “encaging.” They tweeted: “A horrible feeling. What a shanda to encage women at the Kotel.”

More tweets: “Boker tov and chodesh tov! 250 of us are on our way to the Kotel! … We are entering the kotel with police escort … We have been caged off in the women’s section and the other women are taking pictures of us … Despite the shock of being enclosed and gawked at, our prayer is off to a beautiful start … What a frustrating, painful feeling. Women in a cage at the Kotel.”

Also: “As we pray we hear protest chants against us from men and women. There are more of Women of the Wall here than all other women combined.”

To which one unsympathetic follower tweeted: “Why don’t you stop tweeting and actually pray?”

Later: “During the Shema we remember that even though this month we are encaged, at least we are not being arrested”

And a surprise note: “Several rabbis have come down and ordered the men back to their yeshivot to learn. There is nothing to see here. Just women praying (and tweeting – YY).”

We’ll see what happens on the first of the month of Av, a month practically dedicated to Jew on Jew hatred. If you ask me, the proper response from Haredim and Modern Orthodox should be to cede the “holiest plaza” on that morning. Let it look like a ghost town – and let’s all of us go up to the Temple Mount for Rosh Chodesh prayer, complete with the priestly blessing.

Let’s show the world where Judaism’s holiest site truly is, and what Jews are capable of doing up there.

The Women of the Wall (WoW, having won their fight to pray in their own minyan complete with a tallis and tefillin, have escalated their campaign against orthodox Jewish tradition by announcing plans to read from a Torah scroll at prayers at the Western Wall on Monday.

Several leading Haredi rabbis called on thousands of Haredi men to gather for a mass prayer opposite Women of the Wall. Last month, some of them hurling objects at the women and jeered at them.

The Women of the Wall gather at the beginning of every Jewish month for a women’s Rosh Chodesh service at the Western Wall. The new month of Tammuz falls on the  Sabbath and Sunday this week, and the WoW have put off their “Rosh Chodesh” to Monday, one of two regular weekdays when the Torah is read at prayers services.

Their previous attempts to bring a Torah scroll into the Western Wall area prayer area, in violation of local tradition, created a media sensation, with photographs around the world showing police struggling with a woman holding a holy Torah scroll.

The scene played into the hands of the WoW, winning sympathy in the Diaspora from both non-Jews and Jews, mostly but not exclusively those from the Reform and Conservative movements.

In Jewish tradition, women have no obligation to pray in a minyan, and never with a tallis and tefillin, which are part of the men’s obligations. The women want “equality” although Jewish law does not consider men and women unequal because of different obligations for each sex.

The court ruling allowing the Women of the Wall to pray with a tallis and tefillin at the Wall, in a separate women’s section, does not preclude their using a Torah scroll, but the group decided not to do so last  month in order not to raise tension beyond the point of containment, on both sides of the issue.

“We could have done it last month, but [Religious Services Minister Naftali] Bennett asked us to make a certain compromises and we agreed for one month to show our good will,” Lesley Sachs, the group’s director, told JTA Wednesday. “There was no question we would bring it this month. Without it, it’s not a full service.”

Bennett met with Women of the Wall representatives Wednesday in what Sachs called a “very productive meeting.”

Haredi leaders are encouraging thousands to appear n protest but without violence. The Haredi news site Kikar HaShabbat quoted Haredi Deputy Jerusalem Mayor Yossi Deutsch, as saying, “Many will come, according to the instruction of great rabbis, to sanctify the name of heaven and prove that we will not surrender in the battle over the holiness of the Western Wall.”

JTA contributed to this report.

Vandals spray painted the Jerusalem home of a long-time board member of the Women of the Wall (WOW) with vicious graffiti, the first time opponents to WOW have resorted to vengeance.

Some of the graffiti sprayed on the door and stairwell of Peggy Cidor’s apartment read in Hebrew: “Women of the Wall are wicked,” “Peggy, your time is up,” “Peggy, we know where you live,” and “Jerusalem is holy,” according to the Women of the Wall.

The words “Torah tag” also were spray painted on the door of the apartment, calling to mind the phrase “price tag” used by extremist settlers and their supporters to describe retribution in the form of vandalism for settlement freezes and demolitions or Palestinian Authority Arab attacks on Jews.

It is the first time that such an incident has happened to Cidor, who has served on the board of Women of the Wall for the last 15 years. Police are investigating the incident.

The Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, condemned the graffiti in a statement released to the media and called on “all fanatic groups to remove their hands from this holy place.”

“I have warned against the conflagration and gratuitous hatred. I pray and hope we can check the escalation and that a solution will be found that allows the Western Wall to remain not as a disputed area but as holy grounds that unites and unifies,” he said

The Women of the Wall in a statement called on Haredi Orthodox rabbis to condemn the attack.

“This was likely the actions of bored youth, acting in response to the incitement of their leaders. The real problem facing Israeli society is not what they did but what the leadership of the Haredi public will do now. The writing is on the wall. We call on the rabbis to staunchly condemn the vandalism and to end all incitement against Women of the Wall, without regard to the legitimate public discourse,” the group said.

The Women of the Wall’s May 10th prayer service for the Hebrew month of Iyar was mobbed by Haredi Orthodox women and men. The women required police protection, but were still attacked by men throwing chairs, stink bombs and garbage. It was the first time the women held their monthly service following the ruling of a Jerusalem District Court judge that said the group’s services do not violate the law and merit police protection rather than arrests.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Religious Affairs Minister Yair Lapid, who doubles as Finance Minister, are arguing via Facebook over the issue of a women’s minyan at the Western Wall.

Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky has proposed that a Women of the Wall demand for the minyan be allowed at the southern part of the Kotel, called Robinson’s Arch.

Lapid said he is working to approve new regulations but charged Livni with grandstanding. She wrote a letter to Bennett’s office on Shavuot.

Her beef does not concern her views, which are similar to Sharansky, but that no change in the law can be made without her approval.

“I’ll admit that I pray in an Orthodox synagogue…, but I believe that the time is ripe…to apply a pluralistic and tolerant approach at the Western Wall, allowing women to pray according to their customs, mostly because they do so in an area that is intended for women only,” she wrote.

Lapid took to Facebook after the holiday and wrote, “Tzipi Livni, come on.” He chastised Livni for a “provocative spin” and “media trick” by informing Israeli media that she had sent him a letter to his office on the Shavuot holiday, when he could not respond since he was not in his office.

Bennett wrote he has meet with women wanting to pray at the Western Wall with prayer shawls and tefillin that are worn by orthodox men but not women. The meeting was “the first time a religious services minister held talks with the Women of the Wall. And then came Tzipi Livni,” according to Lapid.

Livni wrote back on her Facebook page, “Naftali Bennett, come on. Minister Bennett is upset. He claims that I didn’t consult him before writing him a letter clarifying my stance on women’s prayer at the wall.”

“Since the Women of the Wall controversy broke out, Minister Bennett hasn’t called me a single time to update me on the compromise attempts that he claims he’s trying to reach on the matter, even though the law requires us both to sign the regulations, so he has no one but himself to blame.”