Jew on Jew

A blog post by Adam. Jerusalem's Old City is a mecca (of sorts) for people of various religions. And for Jews, the Western Wall in the Old City is the holiest of sites. Jews flock here from all over the world.

The challenge is that Orthodox Jews control religious sites in Israel, and the Western Wall is no exception. For this reason there are separate men's and women's sections, with the men's section about three times larger than the women's.  Not only are men and women separate, but the rabbis who control the Western Wall have also not permitted women to wear prayer shawls and other ritual objects traditionally only used by men....until today.

After years of enduring arrests for challenging these limits on women, Women of the Wall (http://womenofthewall.org.il) recently won a court case confirming their right to pray at the wall using Jewish ritual clothing and objects.  And today, for the first time since winning the court case the women came to the Wall to pray. The police came out too, but rather than coming to make arrests, they came to protect and support the women.  We too decided to come to show our support.

Yet, in addition to the women, the police, and us, 5,000 to 10,000 Orthodox men and high school girls also showed up to demonstrate their opposition to Women of the Wall. The girls were quiet in their white blouses and long dark skirts. The men, however, were far more aggressive, taunting the Women of the Wall as well as the police, who created a human shield around the praying women. The men threw water bottles, yelled and spit on the women and their supporters. We arrived too late to join the praying women, but watched the scene from a distance and then joined the women as they left the wall under heavy police protection.  How could women wearing tallitot (prayer shawls) cause such an uproar?

The Western Wall, women praying, police protecting (in gray), and Orthodox men going crazy (in black).

As we stood watching the scene and the Orthodox men's vile hatred toward the praying women we couldn't help but feel sad for the Jewish people. Melissa pointed out that just last night we spent over four hours at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Museum. Six million Jews lost their lives in the Holocaust, and there are still fewer Jews in the world today than there were before the war. How, 65 years after losing a third of our population, could we treat each other with such disgust? Jews fighting Jews. Doesn't Israel have enough challenges at it is?