WOW! Women of the Wall

On Rosh Hodesh Cheshvan, I had the option to attend services at Pardes. It was billed as egalitarian, but in order to satisfy the needs of all, they had made it unpalatable to many. The initial email was inviting. It read in part: ” We are really proud that this is a space that Pardes has created in order to celebrate the new month together as a community, even through all the potential discomfort, and are excited to introduce you to it. The project of creating this prayer space looks more like an ongoing conversation than a google form, so please come talk to us.” However, the Google form read in part, “Q: Who is counted to make minyan?
A: Anyone who has a Jewish mother or has completed a conversion that included a beit din of three men, a mikveh immersion, and, additionally for men, a brit milah or hatafat dam. This is a standard based on trust, not checks. Anyone who comes forward with a desire to lead or participate will be considered to have met this standard. That being said, each of you is a critical part of our community and our prayer, and are welcome and encouraged to attend.”

This left me in an impossible quandary. My Beit Din for conversion included one woman, and one transgendered person (male to female). The trans person would probably count, since she had not had the surgery, but the woman, clearly not. So I could either lie by omission, or tell the truth and not be counted. This did not feel comfortable to me, and I opted out. So many others agreed with me that they were unable to make any kind of minyan and cancelled the event. Many of us, instead, chose to go do Rosh Hodesh with Women of the Wall.

I happen to have a very personal connection to WOW: my granddaughter, Yochi Rappeport Zierler, is its Executive Director. She let me know in advance that the decision had been made to attempt to publicly bring in Sifrei Torah. In recent times, WOW has been observing Rosh Hodesh every Jewish month, but they’ve been smuggling in a Torah because otherwise the security at the gate into the plaza won’t let them in. Yochi told me that Benny Gantz from the Blue and White Party, who is currently trying to form a government, had expressed his intention to support the proposal made originally by Natan Sharansky, and later redrawn with the knowledge and consent of Natanyahu. The plan would, according to Haaretz newspaper, “prepare a prayer platform at the southern part of the wall for the use of Reform and Conservative worshippers and Women of the Wall; to build a common entrance to all the platforms, all sharing equal status; and for the new platform to be run jointly by the state, the Conservative and Reform Movements and Women of the Wall.” This, it must be said, is really a very reasonable proposal. It does not change the current Western Wall arrangement overseen by the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox), in which women have a wee bit of wall and the men have the rest, and in which woman never pray out loud, never wear tallitot (prayers shawls) or T’fillin (“phylacteries”), and certainly never have anything to do with a Torah — despite the fact that the halakhah (Jewish law) in no way forbids women from doing any of these things. (For some of the history of WOW listen to this podcast: https://www.tabletmag.com/podcasts/290888/this-wall-part-iv-this-wall-is-my-wall)

“We want to put some pressure on Gantz,” Yochi said. “It’s enough! We’re done with hiding. The government needs to act!” Then she gave me the option to back out of coming — because at this sort of event, violence can and often does ensue. As an illustration, I have a friend who was supporting the WOW from the men’s side, and as a result got his stomach literally stomped on by a crazed Haredi man, resulting in internal damage and a hospital stay. So I undrstand there was some risk, but decided to go.

We arrived in the very early morning at Gan HaPa’amon — Liberty Bell Park. From there we took vans up to the entrance to the plaza of the Western Wall. We gathered at Robinson’s Arch, which is where the proposed liberal praying place would be.

Then we marched up to the security gates to the Western Wall Plaza. There we prevented from entering either on the men’s or women’s side of the security gate (yes, it’s gender differentiated even at security). We stayed for more than an hour, singing, pushing, and persisting, while being heckled by haredim. The press was there, of course, interviewing Yochi and others. Finally, the decision was made to send the Torahs back to Robinson’s Arch. Then, we were at last permitted to enter — two at a time only, so they could frisk us — not for weapons but to small Torahs we might have concealed in our bags or about our persons. We made it to the woman’s side (and men to the men’s side). It was full on both sides with haredim — mostly young girls on “our” side, who had been bussed in from girls’ yeshivas, and some old ladies, while on the men’s side there were throngs of young man in black hats. A well known Orthodox rabbi had put out the word that people should come to oppose the unseemly doings of the Women of the Wall.

We davened a full Rosh Hodesh service, with Hallel (psalms of praise), out loud. A small piece of paper withe Torah portion had to stand in for the Torah itself. All around us the young women hissed like geese, and old women said things like, “You are ruining Judaism. You are taking it apart block by block.” Etc. etc. Nevertheless, we persisted. Our group was encircled by women security forces, who were there theoretically to protect us, but also, as it turned out, to prevent us from engaging in any conversations with the haredi girls. I know because my friend Anne-Gaelle got into such a conversation with four girls, whose ignorance of halakhah in no way stopped them from their certainty, and the security women rushed in to break it up immediately even though no voices were raised.

I told Yochi how proud her grandfather, the old rabblerouser, would have been. She said, laughing, “Oh, yeah. He would have said, if you have to be religious, at least be a rebellious religious.” Which is probably very close to what he would have said, indeed! As for me, I was conflicted. On the one hand, I have no wish to disturb the haredim in their devotions, and if they believe separation of the sexes is important, I’m happy to leave them to it. I am also perfectly comfortable davenning in a gender-separated space, as long as it is one where the barrier doesn’t completely prevent me from feeling a part of the larger community. But the problem, of course, is that no one faction should have control over the devotions of all of us. What is happening at the Wall is symbolic of a much larger makhlocket (disagreement) about how the haredim have seized the religious and ritual life of the Israeli population by the short hairs, despite the fact that most Israelis are not haredim.

No one was injured at this latest WOW event. We were hissed, and told to “Go back to America” and “Go back to Tel Aviv” (otherwise known, I guess, as Sodom and Gomorrah). Attempts were made to drown out our davening and our reading of the Torah. We were lucky. What will happen next is anyone’s guess – especially since Gantz looks no nearer to forming a government than Bibi Netanyahu was. I’m not sorry I had this opportunity to do what Heschel called “praying with my feet”, and when the next Rosh Hodesh rolls around (soon) I will likely be out there again.