5 a.m. My alarm rang. I readied myself and walked to Gan Hapaamon in Jerusalem where Women of the Wall meet to travel to the Kotel, the Western Wall, for worship and celebration of the new Hebrew month.
It was an exciting morning. Nov. 13 was Rosh Hodesh Kislev, our anniversary. It’s been 27 years since our founding sisters responded to an invitation from the late Rivka Haut to hold a women’s service and Torah reading at the Kotel.
But we were also wary because we never know what to expect. After 27 years, we still cannot count on being safe and we are still not allowed to bring in a Torah scroll; Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi in charge of the Western Wall, does not allow it.
We stepped out of the van and lined up at security. Men to the left, women to the right. Women surrendered their bags to male security guards who placed them on a conveyor belt to be x-rayed. Don’t get me wrong, I take security very seriously — in Israel and everywhere. But these security guards were looking for a different kind of contraband: They wanted to be sure we were not sneaking in a Torah scroll.
Lesley Sachs, executive director of Women of the Wall, wheeled a red suitcase filled with prayerbooks, prayer shawls, a selfie-stick for taking photos and a yad, or pointer, used to follow along with the letters of the Torah as they are read. The guards confiscated Lesley’s pointer, promising to return it when she left the area.
Not only did we pray without a Torah scroll, our readers were not even allowed to use a pointer to point at the words in the prayerbook as they chanted them. Oy. The pain of not being able to do what we are used to doing in our Reform and Conservative, Renewal and Reconstructionist, Open Orthodox and partnership minyans in Israel and abroad. And the stares. Women and girls walking by, looking at us as if our praying the same words that they pray is not OK because we sing out loud, we dance and some of us wear kippot, tallitot and tefillin.
At a certain point in the service I heard a shrill whistle. A woman named Miriam was standing along the edge of our group. A haredi woman was blowing a whistle right in Miriam’s face. “Stop!” cried Miriam, whereupon the ultra-Orthodox woman removed the whistle from between her lips and punched Miriam.
Police were called. Officers from the same unit that confiscated our Torah pointer surrouned the whistle blower. “They shook her up,” Lesley told me later. I do not wish this woman any harm, but I do wish she would come to understand that it is what she is doing that is illegal, not what we are doing.
We reached out to Miriam, who told us that she was fine and not to worry. Thank heavens, but she took the hit for all of us. Any one of us could have been punched for asking the woman to stop blowing her whistle.
After the service, a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College invited me to join her as she placed prayers that she had collected from seniors in the U.S. between the Kotel stones. I quickly folded my tallit and wrapped my tefillin, left them on a chair and joined her at the stones. When we returned, my sisters were holding my tallit and tefillin, lest they be confiscated by someone opposed to what we do.
I remembered the days when the police required us to wrap our tallit around our necks like a scarf so as not to have them look like a “male tallit.” Tefillin were not allowed in those days. We have made a lot of progress. Whistle blowing notwithstanding. Punching notwithstanding. Rabbi Rabinowitz’s cruel edict preventing Torah reading notwithstanding.
As we left the women’s section, three Orthodox men and a haredi woman confronted us. The men asked us to explain ourselves. Lesley explained beautifully and spoke about her own special relationship with wearing a tallit when she prays. The men admonished us for wearing kippot and praying out loud. The woman accused us of driving on Shabbat and eating pork. I responded in Hebrew, “I don’t eat pork, but your words are pork,” pointing out that lashon hara — gossip or evil speech — is a sin in Judaism.
It didn’t feel much like an anniversary, but we won’t give up. Our Women of the Wall sisters will be back at the Kotel next month. Miriam will be back. And I will watch the live stream from the Bay Area and pray along. May the day soon come when Israel can make peace with itself as well as with its neighbors.
Rabbi Pamela Frydman is the Bay Area-based chair of Rabbis for Religious Freedom and Equality in Israel.