Protesters who support egalitarian worship at the Western Wall brought about a dozen Torah scrolls to the women’s section on the morning of Nov. 2 and were met with pushing and shoving by haredi Orthodox worshippers and cries of “Nazis” and “whores.”
The scrolls were carried into the women’s section for use during the Women of the Wall’s monthly prayer service as part of a march against restrictions on egalitarian worship at the site. The protest was led by leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements from Israel and the United States.
Among the estimated 100 marchers were Rabbi Steven Wernick, chief executive officer of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism; Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism; and Anat Hoffman, executive director of the Reform movement’s Israel Religious Action Center and founding member of Women of the Wall.
The Western Wall Heritage Foundation prevents women from bringing Torah scrolls into the women’s section. The Women of the Wall group has held its monthly Rosh Hodesh prayer for the new Hebrew month in the women’s section for more than 25 years.
The haredi protesters tried to prevent the marchers from bringing the scrolls to the women’s side of the Western Wall plaza. One photo showed a black-clad haredi woman punching a worshipper from Women of the Wall.
Protesters also blew loud whistles to disrupt the service and shouted epithets at the women, including “Nazis,” “goy” and “whores.” Many of those shouting were young boys.
Police at the site reportedly stood by and in some cases filmed the proceedings. In one video posted by Women of the Wall, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism, warned police that if they did not intervene to help allow the women to worship undisturbed that he and his colleagues would do so.
“The Western Wall won’t be the same Wall after today,” Kariv told Haaretz. “For the first time, women and men, Reform and Conservative Jews, secular and Orthodox, demand their right to enter the Western Wall. Today we liberated the Western Wall from the control of ultra-Orthodox. The ultra-Orthodox parties won’t decide for the rest of the Jewish people how to pray … We won’t acquiesce any longer to discrimination, to incitement, or to the Israeli government’s shameful surrender to a small and aggressive minority.”
Later the same day, the Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement critical of the protest organizers. According to the statement, the “unfortunate incident this morning at the Western Wall does not help advance a solution for prayer arrangements there.” The statement called the incident “unnecessary friction,” and said the “unilateral violation of the status quo at the Western Wall this morning undermines our ongoing efforts to reach a compromise.”
The statement echoed comments that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made Nov. 1 in a speech to about 200 Jewish diaspora leaders in Jerusalem for the Jewish Agency’s Board of Governors meeting.
“We are one people and we have one Wall. Yes, it’s our Wall. And we have problems with the Wall now, but we’re working on it,” he said hours before the well-publicized protest. “The less we work on it publicly, the more likely we are to arrive at a solution.”
An agreement for egalitarian prayer at the site was announced in January, but the religious partners later backed away from the deal.
In June, a group of Orthodox Jewish organizations filed a petition with Israel’s Supreme Court to prevent the establishment of the egalitarian section.
In October, the Reform and Conservative movements in Israel and the Women of the Wall petitioned Israel’s Supreme Court to order the government to follow through on the plan, but no movement has been forthcoming. — jta