This weekend, Jews around the world celebrate Shavuot, the holiday that marks the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people. Some of us will observe it by burning the midnight oil at a Tikkun Leyl Shavuot, the annual all-night event at which we study Torah together as a community.
Tradition has it that all the Jewish people stood together at Mt. Sinai to receive the Torah. Men, women, old, young — everyone stood as equals.
Yet why is it still the case that Jewish women may not carry the Torah that, according to the narrative, was given to them by God, when they pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City?
Back in January, the Israeli government approved a deal that would create a permanent, though separate, non-Orthodox area at the Western Wall, where both men and women could pray together. After 27 years of protests against the Orthodox monopoly, protests that occasionally sparked violence and arrests, it was a welcome development.
At the time, Women of the Wall, the lead organization pushing for equal access, signed off on the deal, with some calling it historic. It seemed that a workable compromise had won the day.
Yet even this week, Women of the Wall executive director Lesley Sachs was detained and interrogated by police for bringing a Torah scroll to the women’s section of the Kotel. She was part of a large group of women activists praying at the site, as they do at the start of every Hebrew month.
Adding a local dimension to the incident, the Torah was loaned to the group this spring by Sacramento’s Congregation B’nai Israel.
The ultra-Orthodox maintain their iron grip on the Kotel and the religious practices there. The rules in place benefit the old patriarchy and deny Jewish women their right to worship at the holiest site in Judaism.
The Kotel, like the Torah, belongs to the Jewish people, the entire Jewish people, and that includes women, who have the right to pray there in whatever manner they see fit. That includes wearing tefillin and prayer shawls, and carrying Torah scrolls.
Our cover photo this week shows a member of the federation-led LGBTQ mission to Israel praying at the Kotel last month next to a haredi Jew. We chose the image to represent Jewish diversity, the theme of this issue celebrating Pride Month.
Jewish diversity includes the gay community, Jews of color, and certainly women. Restrictions on their right to pray at the Wall is just one more glass ceiling, only this one is made of Jerusalem stone.