Recently, Amichai Lau-Lavie, founding director of Storahtelling and a second-year Jewish Theological Seminary rabbinical student, published a blog post about illegally smuggling tallitot (prayer shawls) into the Western Wall for use by Women of the Wall on February 11, Rosh Hodesh Adar.
“I broke the law by smuggling prayer shawls into the site of the former Jewish Temple, right under the nose of the Israeli police,” he wrote. “I don’t feel badly about breaking a law, which is not even an actual law to begin with — but I feel terrible about the situation in which a place for prayer has become a circus of terror and an abuse of all that’s sacred.”
Lau-Lavie spoke with The Sisterhood by phone from Jerusalem to explain exactly what he did, why he did it, and what he thinks might be the best way forward in making the Kotel a place where all Jews can pray as they see fit.
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