Group's praying draws ire in Israel

By Tracy Wilkinson
Los Angeles Times
Monday, June 5, 2000

JERUSALEM -- As morning sunlight bathed the stones of the Western Wall early Sunday, a group of women gathered nearby, pointed their faces toward the sky and lifted their voices in prayer.

"Hallelujah, hal-le-lu-jah," they sang before Judaism's most holy site.

And in so doing they launched another salvo in Israel's bitter religious wars. At issue are fundamental and divisive questions over who is a proper Jew and what role women should assume in the tradition-bound culture of religious observance.

Armed with a new Israeli Supreme Court ruling, the 75 women attempting to pray were nevertheless met with a barrage of insults and heckling from mostly ultra-Orthodox men -- and women -- who found the display offensive.

"You are worse than Christians!" shouted one ultra-Orthodox man. "You are not Jews!" shouted an ultra-Orthodox woman.

Police formed lines to protect the mostly secular women from their opponents, and only a few minor scuffles broke out among some of the ultra-Orthodox men and the police. Four men were detained.

The women staging the prayer demonstration are part of an ongoing effort to gain for women the right to worship at the Western Wall as men do. The court on May 22 ruled that women do have the right, like men, to pray aloud, read from the Torah and wear the fringed prayer shawl known as the talit and traditional accouterments such as phylacteries, small cases with scriptures inside that are bound to the forehead and arm with leather straps.

Many devout Jews were outraged at the court's ruling and accused the judicial body of meddling and attempting to erode the tradition on which Judaism is based.

As has happened with most of the court's groundbreaking decisions, the parliament immediately began work to circumvent it. Last week, preliminary parliamentary approval was given to a bill that punishes women with seven years in prison if they pray at the Western Wall in the manner approved by the court.

That in turn outraged the women's group and many members of Israel's secular majority.

Anat Hoffman, a leader of the Women of the Wall group, said that the women would not give in to the attempts to keep them away from the holy site. She said that the women have been praying at the site at the beginning of every Jewish month for some time.

"We are a big and significant enough group that we should be allowed to pray here," said Hoffman, a Jerusalem City Council member. Holding a white prayer shawl in her hand near the wall, she added that several men had "desecrated the holy site" by swearing at the women.

"What have we become?" asked an incensed Naomi Chazan, who represents the leftist Meretz Party in parliament. "Afghanistan? Iran?"

Praying amid hisses

Hoffman and Chazan were among those who came to the wall on Sunday in their first attempt to pray together since the court ruling and the parliament's action. Sunday was the first day of the Jewish month, a time for special prayers.

They stood in a knot facing the wall and prayed for about an hour, weathering taunts that brought some to tears. A couple of the women donned prayer shawls. Each time they sang aloud, the men's section erupted in a chorus of boos intended to drown them out. A handful of ultra-Orthodox women hissed at the other women and accused them of "destroying the people of Israel."

The ultra-Orthodox believe that women should not pray aloud because men who are praying at the wall should not be exposed to their distracting voices. The use of prayer shawls and other accessories is also, by tradition, restricted to men.

At the Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical Second Temple, which is also known as the Wailing Wall or, in Hebrew, "Kotel," men and women pray on separate sides, with a tall metal fence dividing them, in keeping with Orthodox practice. Women are supposed to pray only as individuals.

Michael Kaufman, a self-described writer who specializes in Judaism and feminism, watched the prayer demonstration Sunday and accused the women of violating sanctified customs in the interest of self-promotion.

"Can you imagine a bunch of Protestants walking into the Vatican and holding their own service?" he said.

Threat of jail time

Many of the women participating Sunday are from the Reform and Conservative movements, liberal branches of Judaism popular in the United States but seen by the ultra-Orthodox here as false claims on the faith.

The parliamentary bill that would send women to prison was sponsored by two of Israel's leading religious parties and was approved when nearly half the lawmakers in the Knesset were absent

However, some religious leaders have said they think the prison sentence seems harsh, and ultimately the law might not pass.

Yakov Litzman, a parliamentarian for the United Torah Judaism party, said the seven-year sentence comes from existing legislation that punishes anyone who desecrates holy sites.

"And there is no desecration greater than that of women who come to desecrate the holiness of the Western Wall with all kinds of provocations such as carrying a Torah scroll and other things reserved by Halakha (Jewish law) only to men," Litzman said.

This article includes material from The Associated Press.

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