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.”

Tomorrow, Friday, is Rosh Chodesh Sivan (six more shopping days until Shavuos), and as they have done every Rosh Chodesh, the Women of the Wall have announced that they’ll meet y’all at the women’s section of the Kotel. Except this time around they’re doing it with judicial sanction, following two decisions—one of them after a dead-in-the-water appeal by police—of Jerusalem courts that the ladies’ prayer, with tallit and tefillin, does not constitute a violation of the public order.

Which means they won’t be arrested, as has been the case for some 25 years. And if anyone dare yell at them, or spit, or tell them they’re going to hell in a decorative tallis bag – they, the WOW opponents would likely be cuffed and detained by the men and women in black.

Yes, they’ve won a battle, a long one at that—but the war is far from over.

On Tuesday, as Kikar Hashabbat reported, United Torah Judaism MKs held a special meeting with the deans and principals of the major Orthodox women’s seminaries in Israel, and it was decided to initiate a central prayer service at the Kotel, with, possibly, thousands of seminary students, as they put it: in response to the provocation by the Women of the Wall.

A senior UTJ source told Kikar Hashabbat that they’re not looking to create a counter provocation, only to prove to all the people of Israel that kosher Jewish women are the true women of the Wall, who pray and supplicate by the Kotel year-round, not just on Rosh Chodesh, and not to start riots.

There’s probably a secret place in a dungeon under some Casbah, where all the press officers for all the different organizations in the world can meet late at night and critique each other’s self righteous lies. This one probably wins a big, free drink next meeting…

Just in case, during the Knesset debate of the WOW V. WOW extravaganza, a representative the Police Department said that—in keeping with the recent Magistrate Court order, the police would protect the Women of the Wall from harm.

Take that, other Women of the Wall!

On Thursday, the day before Rosh Chodesh, it turns out that several Haredi leaders, including, most prominently, Maran Aharon Leib Shteinman, widely regarded as the Gadol Hador for Lithuanians, have determined that thousands of seminary students may leave home early Friday morning for a heartfelt prayer at the plaza by the “remnant of our Temple, the Western Wall.”

Meanwhile, a contingency of Orthodox “Women for the Wall” announced that they, too, are coming at 6:30 AM—best way to get a good spot at this point—to pray and recite Psalms “for the sake of Israel and against the greatest threats to the Torah and Judaism born by the Women of the Wall.”

Their initiative has won the support of two prominent National Religious religious Zionist rabbis: Rabbi Dov Lior and Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu—provided they agree to abstain from violence.

Anyone who uses the words “cat” and “fight” in the comments below this report gets a stern warning for sure…

“We just want to pray quietly and with kavanah (deliberately),” Ronit Peskin, director of “Women for Wall,” told Srugim. “Women need to pray and demonstrate that they could set an example, without reacting to their screaming and provocative behavior.”

She stressed that every woman must come with full intention of sanctifying God in every part of her manner and prayers.

Shira Pruce, Director of Public Relations for then original Women of the Wall told The Jewish Press that she was honored and delighted for having inspired so many thousands of women to come and pray at the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh.

“If women of the Wall has inspired thousands of women to come to the Kotel, Amen V’amen,” she said.

Which was the quote I was hoping for, naturally.

In fact, in the spirit of peace and mutual respect, the WOW leadership has acquiesced this one time only to obey the police instructions and not bring out a Torah scroll to their event. Apparently, according to the cops’ psak, it’s fine for women to wear tallit and teffilin, but it violates something terrible if they dare hold up a Torah.

The Jewish Press just received a press release from Women of the Wall, declaring (gloating, actually) that in light of the District Court decision on April 24, and after 24 years of monthly prayers at the Western Wall (Kotel), “Women of the Wall will return to the holy site to pray with Torah, tefillin (phylacteries) and tallit (prayer shawl) on Rosh Hodesh Sivan, May 10.”

The WOW add: “It is with great pride that the women, from diverse Jewish backgrounds, adopt the important ruling by Judge Moshe Sobel, and join for this joyous occasion.”

“It’s about equal rights and democracy,” WOW Director of Public Relations Shira Pruce told The Jewish Press. “The Western Wall is not an Ultra Orthodox synagogue. It’s a public space. What the judge declared is that you cannot tell women not to pray a certain way in this public space.”

Expect the Wall site is administered by an Ultra Orthodox rabbi, who is a government official.

“That does not make it an Ultra Orthodox synagogue, which would make it a private place” argues Pruce. “It’s not a private place. Does he (Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the ‘Kotel Rabbi’) oversee it? Yes. But in our petition, which has been endorsed by many organizations, including some Orthodox groups, we made it clear that the site has been mismanaged.”

The March 10 online petition, which will eventually be sent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to Jewish Agency Chair Natan Sharansky, states, among other things:

The Torah teaches us to love one another and our neighbors. Subjecting women to verbal and physical abuse, detention and threat of prosecution for simply exercising their human right to worship fosters a generation of Jews for whom Israel and the Kotel Plaza are associated with fear and religious intolerance.

Speaking of exercising the human right to worship, this reporter mentioned the nearby other holy site, a mere 20 feet or so above WOW’s area of contention—the Temple Mount—where Jews are forbidden to pray and are removed by police sometimes when they just close their eyes and start whispering, even if they’re just doing math.

I asked Pruce if she saw a connection between the plight of the women not being allowed to pray at the Kotel and the plight of Jews in general not being allowed to pray, and often even to visit, the Temple Mount.

“There is no connection, as far as we are concerned” she answered emphatically. “There’s no comparison between the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. I understand that people want to jump on the wave of Women of the Wall, to advance other political agendas. But ours is a struggle for women’s equal rights, religious freedom—civil rights that women do not have and men do have, in a public site that Israel has and oversees and runs. Temple Mount is not even comparable. It’s not relevant, it’s apples and oranges.”

This reporter suggested it was more like comparing Granny apples to Delicious apples (which is pretty brilliant, if you read it a second time). But Pruce insisted strongly that it is apples and oranges.

“We’re talking about a completely different political reality. Our struggle is and always has been at the Western Wall. Because of what it represents to us, religiously, culturally, spiritually, and to the world at large. to the Jewish people internationally, who could not speak up about it, and who now have found their voice about it.

“Our struggle is only about the Kotel.”

Of course, the aspirations of Jews throughout the past 2500 years or so have not been to go daven outside the rear supporting wall of God’s Temple, but rather way up there, where God’s House actually used to stand – but once you acknowledge that, you probably turn off three quarters of your support on the left. And so, for the record, WOW’s position is a case of severe official myopia regarding any other group who might be blocked from prayer literally 20 feet away.

Regarding Jewish Agency Chair Natan Sharansky’s suggestion to, essentially, erect a permanent Reform synagogue at the Robinson’s Arch part of the site, the press release says “Women of the Wall share great respect and appreciation” for “his thoughtful, good faith effort to find a resolution to the conflict at the Kotel. We recognize the significance of this plan for an egalitarian section at the Kotel and commend all those who worked tirelessly together to reach an agreement that respects the great diversity of Jews in Israel and abroad,” but…

Women finally have the official nod to pray with a tallis, read from a Torah scroll and do more or less as they wish in a new “egalitarian” section to be enlarged at the southern end of the Western Wall, Haaretz reported Monday.

The newspaper said that Prime Minister Netanyahu told Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky, who formulated the proposal, to draw up a timetable for establishing an egalitarian section at the Western Wall, popularly known by the Hebrew term “Kotel.” Sharansky is to meet with Office of the Prime Minister director Tzvi Hauser and with National Security Advisor Yaakov Amidror, who is orthodox, to move the proposal off the drawing boards.

The decision ostensibly undermines the authority of the orthodox Rabbinate at the Western Wall, where there is a men’s and women’s section but no permission for women to pray in a non-traditional way.

However, the “victory” of the “Women of the Wall”, led primarily by American immigrants belonging to the Reform movement, is not necessarily the opening shot to challenge orthodox Judaism as the authority in Israel.

Indeed, it may be the last shot as well as the first.

The Prime Minister reportedly was encouraged by the massive support from American Jews for the women’s demands at the Western Wall, the most popular religious site for Jews visiting Israel.

The sight of policemen arresting women for the crime of disturbing public order by wearing a tallis or trying to carry a Torah scroll to the Western Wall was too much for American Jews, offended by the apparent affront to the pluralistic understanding of “equality.”

Buoyed by massive coverage in the American media, led by The New York Times, the Diaspora shouted from the rooftops, although not from the women’s sections of synagogues. The shouting was no match for the austere face of the orthodox Rabbinate, which often does everything it can to distance Jews who don’t do as they say.

The Haaretz report that the adoption of the plan “would wrest exclusive control of prayer at the wall from the Orthodox” may be wishful thinking for the newspaper, known for its bitter opposition to anything that smacks of religious authority if it is by orthodox Jewry.

If the women think that the Sharansky plan sets the stage for the Reform movement to challenge the orthodox rabbinate, they may have to say a lot of prayers to fulfill their wishes.

As much as the American Jewish committee thinks it influences what happens in Israel, one important factor in Netanyahu’s decision is that most of the Israeli public could care less one way or the other about the issue.

Most Israelis are not orthodox but most also are steeped in tradition and Middle East culture. They consider many American customs a bit odd, if not weird. Westernization is fine at the malls, and if women want to pray like men, fine.

The right of women to wear a tallis and read from a Torah scroll in their own egalitarian space does not mean that Israelis won’t stay quiet if the Reform movement wages a war on the entire orthodox establishment.

As secular as Israelis appear to be to Americans, scantily or oddly-dressed women often are seen in Israel reciting Psalms while traveling on buses or waiting at the bus stop.

Secular Israelis have a common cause with non-Orthodox Americans on the issues of civil marriages and divorces, but they will not necessarily be in a hurry to support a direct challenge to the orthodox rabbinate, which is a crucial part of modern Israeli culture.

The fact is that the Women of the Wall’s “victory” confines them to a special area, away from the popular Western Wall area. True equality, in their view, would be able to pray exactly where everyone else prays.

In effect, they may have lost the war by winning the battle.

Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky is preparing to suggest that women pray whenever they want, complete with prayer shawls and a Torah scroll, at the southern edge of the Western Wall, known as Robinson’s Arch.

The proposal was reported by the Forward, and afterwards the Jewish Agency released a fudgy statement that “Sharansky will present his recommendations to Prime Minister Netanyahu upon the chairman’s return to Israel from his visit to college campuses in the United States.”

“One Western Wall for one Jewish people,” Sharansky said, adding that he hopes his recommendations will allow “the Kotel will once again be a symbol of unity among the Jewish people, and not one of discord and strife.”

“Strife” is a police war. “Hatred,” ”jealousy” and “stiff-necked” are closer to the truth.

The Women of the Wall argue that the Haredi rabbis in charge of the Western Wall are insensitive to their needs and treat them as second-class citizens.

Although many if not most Orthodox rabbis in the United States have no problem with a women’s prayer minyan, the Chief Rabbinate as well as  and many non-Haredi Orthodox rabbis in Israeli have a problem with it, based on their application of Jewish law.

They charge that a women’s prayer minyan, complete with their own Torah reading, would offend their religious sensitivities.

An unstated but obviously huge difference is that there is no place for prayer in the Diaspora that has the holiness like the Western Wall, and there is no public area for prayer that is attended by both women and men.

The conflict will probably hit the headlines again Wednesday and Thursday, the two days that are the beginning of the Hebrew month of Iyar. The High Court has allowed the Women of the Wall to hold their own minyan at Robinson’s Arch, but the women demand they be allowed to pray at the more widely attended portion of the Western Wall.

Every Rosh Chodesh, they try to break the ban at the Western Wall and frequently are arrested. Pictures in  American media of a policeman struggling with a woman holding a Torah scroll have helped rip to the seams the fragile relationship between the Diaspora and Israel.

Sharansky has come up with a compromise that would give the women half of what they want and would spare the Western Wall rabbi and Haredi worshippers from having to pray at the Kotel while knowing a women’s minyan is taking place next to them, despite a partition, and being exposed to hearing women’s singing, which they consider a violation of Jewish law.

Anat Hoffman, leader of the WOW movement, previously has rejected what she calls a “separate but equal” solution.

Her position has been that having the right to pray in a separate minyan is only part of an overall goal, in her words, “to dismantle the Western Wall Heritage Foundation,” the Haredi Orthodox entity that oversees the Western Wall.”

After Sharansky’s proposal went public, she backed off and said she welcomes the compromise.

The idea is “very ambitious,” Hoffman said. ”You don’t always have to be right; you have to be smart — and compromise is a sign of maturity and understanding what’s at stake here.”

Neither side can get it wants without grossly offending the other, but the Haredi community cannot be expected to accept her agreement without suspicion.  If WOW want to pray as they wish, there is nothing to stop them from claiming they have the right to pray together with their husbands or male friends in a mixed minyan, which is totally prohibited in all Orthodox circles and would offend Orthodox worshippers.

But Hoffman appears to be smart enough to accept the Sharansky solution, putting the Western Wall rabbi in a position that he might as well agree gracefully rather than pitting himself against the entire political establishment outside of Haredi circles.

If he does agree, there is a good chance that the power of prayer can exceed political power.

The rabbi of the Western Wall has promised Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky that women will not arrested if they dare to say the mourners’ ”kaddish” prayer at the Western Wall.

The “Great Enlightenment” of Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz is the latest chapter in the saga of the Women of the Wall (WOW), whose movement – however suspect its motives might be – has exposed a total disconnect between Haredi rabbis’ outlook and the Jewish world at-large.

The flak over the recital of the recital of the Kaddish prayer also has showed that Jerusalem police act on the orders of Rabbi Rabinowitz.

WOW plans to pray on next week’s Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) and on Rosh Chodesh at the Western Wall.

But reciting the Kaddish? That appears to be too much for the Western Wall rabbi.

Even though there is a  partition to separate men and women according to the ancient custom practiced today even by non-Haredi orthodox communities, perhaps the rabbi is  relying on the strictest of the strict prohibition of a man, God forbid, hearing a woman’s voice and therefore losing his concentration on his prayers.

Or perhaps he considers the Kaddish prayer reserved for men.

Whatever his reasoning, Jerusalem police commission Yossi Pariente wrote Anat Hoffman, chairman of WOW, “We would like to inform you that, starting on this coming Rosh Chodesh, the Israel Police will fulfill its duty to enforce the law.”

The police previously have arrested women trying to pray in a minyan of 10 people on Rosh Chodesh, the first day of the new month. The women’s group has drawn worldwide publicity by wearing prayer shawls and trying to carry a Torah scroll to the Western Wall, in violation of a High Court order.

There is a solid foundation of rabbinic laws against the women’s monthly attraction, which understandably is seen as a provocation by Israeli Jews, even those who are not Haredi or even not orthodox.

But the altercations of the police and the scenes of a Jew being arrested for holding a Torah scroll have played into the hands of the WOW movement and have indeed been a provocation – provoking more hatred of rabbinic authority.

The motives of the Women of the Wall are more than just reciting prayers or reading from a Torah scroll. They openly campaign against what they call a “monopoly” of Orthodox Judaism, which has been around for many centuries, leaving open the question of how tolerant women and Reform Jewish leaders would be of Haredi demands if they were to be in authority.

Instead of dealing with the challenge in a 21st fashion – perhaps sitting down with the women  and learning with them the Talmudic  views that actually promote many aspects of modern feminism – the Haredi community has chosen measures that conjure up horrid visions of centuries of non-Jewish rules’ disgust of Jews and Judaism.

“Prohibiting women from saying Kaddish is a shanda (Yiddish for shameful) and brought on solely by the hegemony and short-sightedness of Rabbi Rabinowitz,” said Hoffman in response to the letter Jerusalem Police Chief Pariente. “He has, without a doubt, crossed a clear red line, as women’s right to say Kaddish is respected and accepted by the entire Jewish world, including Orthodox factions…

“To refuse mothers and mourning women the right and obligation of saying the mourner’s prayer, Kaddish, is cold-hearted. Women of the Wall will be at the Kotel and will say Kaddish, with the utmost religious intention and emotional commitment that is deserved and require of us.”

The issue has become so emotional that there is almost no room for any logical or knowledgeable input. American Jewish journalists and non-Orthodox Jewish leaders, often without any understanding of Jewish law, have jumped on the harassment of women to show Judaism as Medieval and allegedly anti-feminist.

One of the most recent examples is Peter Beinart’s Open Zion blog on the Daily Beast.

He posted an article by Emily Hauser, who has made herself one of thousands of modern “commentators” on the Torah. She titled one recent article, “Moses was a jerk, & Passover wouldn’t have happened without five women.”

Hauser exploited Pariente’s letter to promote populism whereby everyone is a religious authority. The “Israel’s government is telling the world’s Jews that they know what Judaism is, and we don’t,” she wrote.

Following Monday’s arrest of 10 women praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Conservative Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, Executive Vice President of the Rabbinical Assembly (the international association of Conservative rabbis), called for “a quick solution that respects religious pluralism and women’s equality.”

An assembly press release stated that Schonfeld has been an outspoken critic of the treatment of non-Orthodox Jews at the wall. Among those arrested this time were RA members Debra Cantor of B’nai Tikvoh-Sholom in Bloomfield, Conn., and Robyn Fryer Bodzin of the Israel Center of Conservative Judaism in Flushing, N.Y.—both Conservative rabbis. In response to the arrests, Schonfeld declared:

“Today’s arrests at the Western Wall are a deeply concerning development at a time when we were hopeful for real progress on religious pluralism and women’s equality at this sacred site. It is unthinkable that in 2013, Israel is still denying the religious freedom of Jews wishing to express their faith without fear of being detained. Today’s action once again divides the Jewish community’s unity and drains energy away from crucial issues demanding our attention.”

Adding to Schonfeld’s comments, Conservative Rabbi Gerald C. Skolnik, president of the Rabbinical Assembly issued the following statement:

“I am proud of rabbis Bodzin and Cantor and all those who were willing to put their personal freedom at risk today on behalf of all of us. Rabbi Cantor, one of the first women ordained by our movement, and Rabbi Fryer Bodzin, ordained in 2005, embody the immeasurable contribution that women make to the Conservative Rabbinate and world Jewry. “