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Groups of Conservative and Reform Jews have tried to challenge the divider (mechitzah) at the Wall that creates a men's and women's prayer area before by praying together.

Those attempts, a series of which have been led by a group called Women of the Wall, have been met by similar attacks by some ultra-religious Jews who have thrown chairs, bottles and others objects at the women.

In the late 1980s the Women of the Wall gained widespread support among American Jewish feminists. The group sued unsuccessfully for the right to carry the Torah at the Wall, a tradition on Shavuot.