Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 9, 2021

The Women of the Wall prayer service passed off relatively quietly on Monday morning at the Western Wall despite a promise by hardline religious-Zionist activists to protest the group.

The group faced jeers and other mild forms of harassment by other women praying in the women's section, as well as similar activity by small groups of Orthodox children harassing a group of men praying in solidarity with the Women of the Wall.

Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev (Labor) promised in June to ensure that the Women of the Wall would not face such harassment again.

During the course of the Women of the Wall prayer service on Monday, women and young girls in the womens section continually shouted at the group, especially when they sang.

And the Western Wall Heritage Foundation deployed a loudspeaker system for use in the male prayer service in the mens section when the Women of the Wall service began, apparently in an effort to drown at their singing.

A small group of boys both ultra-Orthodox and from the hardline religious-Zionist community booed, jeered and insulted the small group of men praying behind the womens section at the site in solidarity with the group.

Present among the men were Labor MK Gilad Kariv, who is a and Reform rabbi, as well as Yizhar Hess, deputy chairman of the World Zionist Organization and former director of the Masorti Movement in Israel.

A group calling itself the Joint Committee for the Preservation of the Holiness of the Western Wall announced on Sunday that thousands of worshippers would go to the holy site on Monday to protect the holiness of the Western Wall, accompanied by Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu.Ultimately, there were only small numbers of protestors against Women of the Wall.

Kariv noted that the prayer arrangements and security provisions for the Women of the Wall and the mens service that accompanied them were better and more orderly than has been the case in previous months.

If the [public security] minister and the police want it, then everything is under control and everything is quiet, the MK told The Jerusalem Post.

Hess said that unlike many prayer services at the beginning of the new Hebrew month that are marred by severe protest, Mondays was almost uplifting, adding that the voices of the Women of the Wall group singing could be heard from afar.

There are however those who try to crassly bother them in the womens section, but much less than in other months, and the public plaza where we [men] prayed was much quieter, said Hess.

Read more here:
Women of the Wall pray at Kotel, harassed by Orthodox - The Jerusalem Post

Category: Zionism
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