Four women were detained at the Western Wall on Dec. 14 by Israeli police for trying to enter the site with prayer shawls.
The women were planning to participate in a special service for the beginning of the Hebrew month of Tevet.
Unlike in previous months, the women were asked to hand over their prayer shawls, or tallitot, before entering the Western Wall Plaza, part of a new rule that prohibits women from entering the plaza with ritual objects, the Forward reported.
In 2003, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a government ban on women wearing tefillin or tallit or reading from a Torah scroll at the Western Wall. Women of the Wall has held a prayer service at the holy site almost every month for the last 20 years on Rosh Hodesh, or the beginning of a new Hebrew month, at the back of the women’s section.
Women participating in the service have been arrested nearly every month since June for wearing prayer shawls or for “disturbing public order.”
On Dec. 14, Rabbi Elyse Frishman of Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, N.J., who had managed to enter the Western Wall Plaza with her tallit worn under her jacket, was forcibly removed from the women’s section and taken to the general plaza. She continued to pray there until she was detained by police, who asked her to sign a written complaint in Hebrew, which she said she did not understand and refused to sign, according to the Forward.
The others detained and questioned were Women of the Wall board member Rachel Cohen Yeshurun and two 18-year-olds from Britain participating in a gap-year program, the daily paper Haaretz reported. They all refused to sign the complaints against them and were released after several hours, according to reports.
More than 80 women reportedly participated in the service. — jta