Woman wearing tallit arrested at Western Wall
Please read the following JTA article reporting on Women of the Wall being arrested. Also, please read my piece from last year God, the State, and Women. (R. Arthur Waskow, Ed.)
JERUSALEM (JTA), November 18, 2009 — Jerusalem police arrested a woman praying at the Western Wall for wearing a tallit.
The woman, who was participating in Rosh Chodesh services, was arrested Wednesday based on an Israeli Supreme Court ruling that the public must dress according to the customs of the site, Israel Radio reported.
Police came to the site after the Women of the Wall group asked to read from a Torah scroll, according to reports. The group usually holds its services at Robinson’s Arch, located near the Wall.
Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, the Western Wall rabbi, called the group’s actions Wednesday “an act of provocation that seeks to turn the Western Wall into disputed territory,” according to reports.
The chairwoman of the women’s group, Anat Hoffman, said it was the first time that a woman has been arrested at the Western Wall for donning a tallit. She identified the arrested woman as Nofrat Frenkel, a medical student from Beersheba.
Comments
4 comments postedThose of who are part of Women of the Wall have had to live with the madness of negotiating the State’s desire to control how women pray at the Western Wall. Every month is a challenge to second guess whether we will be harassed, attacked, arrested for praying at the Kotel. Since we want to pray, not get into fights with the police or the haredim, most months are quiet since we voluntarily “hush” ourselves, wear our tallitot unobtrusively and dont read torah at the Kotel itself.
This past month, we did not have anyone challenging us-it was just calm and quiet at 7:30 in the morning. The women who were there wanted to see if it would be possible to read from our newly acquired mini size Torah which is light and easily hidden. As soon as the police told them to stop, they did.
While I agree with Arthur that the genie is now out of the bottle, for Jewish women around the world, the last bastion of strict traditional Judaism is not going to give way easily. It may take several more generations before women can read torah or wear tallitot there.
Best regards,
Batya Betsy Kallus
Since when does HaShem want anyone (male or female) punished for devekut? Is a woman who is seeking to be nearer to her G-d by davennen at the kotel with a tallit around her shoulders to be suffer consequences? This is when the halakha created by humans becomes tyrannical and G-d’s law is supplanted by the hubris of humans. This is a travesty of the Divine Will.
Authority such as this can rule only as long as people remain submissive.
Who gets to define the customs of the site and why should that prevail in any event over freedom of religion.
If I wear a tallit with t’cheylet, will I be arrested? If I wear my combined pair of rashi and Rabeynu Tam T’fillin will I be arrested? And when did it become the custom of the site for military formations to take place at the Kotel?
In any event how can any local custom trump the right of freedom of religion.
We now have the ridiculous situation that a person who happens to be a man wearing a four cornered garment without tzizit or or a garment made of shaatnez will not be arrested by police but a woman wearing a four cornered garment with tzizit is arrested.
Shame on the Police and shame on the Courts and finally shame on the Rabbi of the Wall for not recognizing that by preventing women from davvenning at the Kotel, he and his supporters have turned it into disputed territory.