When Haredi Rhetoric Turns Victimhood on Its Head
By Elana Sztokman
The Internet can be a nasty place. Whether due to the replacement of visceral human relationships with a cold, lifeless screen, or because people have learned to type faster than they think, something about Internet conversation seems to bring out the worst in human discourse. As my Forward colleague Jay Michaelson pointed out in his column last week, “the immediacy and anonymity of the Comment feature on the Internet encourages one to respond in the heat of the moment, and with as much fire as possible.”
That said, there seems to be a particular fire in talkbacks relating to religious Judaism. Michaelson noticed this as well, what he called, “rage…dressed up in religious rhetoric.” In my writings on topics of gender and religious life at the Forward, in The Jerusalem Post, and elsewhere, I’ve been called a “man wannabe,” an “anti-Semite” and other names. It’s intriguing to me that essays about cultural trends often merit one or two comments while comments about gender and religion can get 20–30 comments. There is an ire around religious issues (especially gender) that begs explication. Michaelson calls for collective anger management, but I think there is something else at work here.
Praying With the Women of the Wall: A Teen Girl's Account
By Avigayil Sztokman
The Wailing Wall. It’s considered a very spiritual place where you’re supposed to pray/wail (as the name implies) to God. It’s supposed to be a very moving experience — I mean, people come from all over the globe to see the Wall’s wonders. But after praying there with Women of the Wall, I now have a whole new side to this “experience” (not to mention a whole new side to the term “wail.”) Before I went on Monday morning for Rosh Chodesh Adar, I had a vague sense of what might happen. I heard about people tossing words and other things at the group. But I’m not sure I really understood what that might feel like.
When we arrived, we were met by cameras and television crews, as well as by police. There was a male policeman in the women’s section and I was wondering why people weren’t telling him off for that — you know, for being on the wrong side of the mechitza and hearing women’s voices. Anyway, I went with two other girls to get siddurim, and then one religious girl walked up to my friend, who was wearing a tallit under her clothes, and said, “Homo!” I knew it was a very offensive and politically incorrect thing to say, but it still made me want to laugh. I tried to keep a straight face when the first haredi guy started screaming and ranting from the other side of the mehitza, making such obviously false points that made me feel like I was in some alternate universe.
February 12, 2010, 2:15pm
Daring To Daven at the Kotel
By Julie Schonfeld
Before leaving for Israel, where she will take part in the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations’ annual mission to the Jewish state, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld reflects on the recent debacle over women’s prayer at the Western Wall — responding both as the Rabbinical Assembly’s executive vice president and as the mother of two young boys. What follows are excerpts from her essay:
What will happen when my sons are old enough to accompany me to Israel, where I will attend the Conference of Presidents’ annual Mission next week? A highlight of every trip to Israel is a visit to the Kotel, the symbolic site of Jewish yearning for centuries. My boys are young enough to stand with me in the women’s section, where they would expect me to don the tallis and tefillin they are accustomed to seeing on their mom. How long until the heckling and threats of the ultra-Orthodox begin? How long until the police come to intervene and in front of the horrified gaze of my children do what is only done with “bad guys,” — to arrest me. This is what Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum has tragically coined, hatradah datit — religious harassment.
Challenging the Women of the Wall
By Allison Josephs
Every time I read about the ongoing Women of the Wall saga, I am filled with sorrow. As I picture Jew fighting Jew, a woman being roughhoused by police, fingerprinted like a common criminal, my heart is heavy. Their fight is reminiscent of that of Rosa Parks. All these women want is the same treatment as men. How could one group be allowed to monopolize a national holy site?
These are the emotions that fill my heart. When I think about it, though, I ultimately disagree with what the Women of the Wall are trying to accomplish.
I can see things from both sides because I’ve been in both worlds. I was raised as Conservative Jew, and was outraged the first time I saw the mechitza at the Western Wall, during a family trip to Israel when I was almost 14. I had basically no real understanding of Orthodox Judaism at that point, but the message of the mechitza was clear to me: You women don’t have the same rights and privileges as men.
December 15, 2009, 5:27pm
Masorti Leaders Challenge Oren's Remarks on Tallit Arrest
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
Leaders of the Masorti Foundation for Conservative Judaism in Israel today sent Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. a letter questioning recent remarks which seemed to criticize accounts of a woman who was arrested at the Kotel for wearing a prayer shawl.
Ambassador Michael Oren, speaking at last week’s convention of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, said that the young woman, Nofrat Frenkel, was not arrested but merely “led away” by police from the prayer area at the Kotel when haredi men became aware she was wearing a tallit.
The report of his statement can be read at the bottom of the Forward story here.
Oren’s statement is directly contradicted by Frenkel’s first-person account, published in the Forward here, and by other women who were part of the Women of the Wall group which was trying to pray at the Wall on the first day of the new Jewish month. The account of one of them, Anat Hoffman, can be read here.
Now Rabbi Alan Silverstein and David Lissy, the chair and chief executive, respectively, of the Conservative movement’s foundation to support Masorti communities in Israel, have written Oren a letter saying that they are “astonished” by his “somewhat disparaging” remarks about the Frenkel affair at the United Synagogue conference.
In the letter, a copy of which was obtained by The Forward, they write:
It is always good to deal with facts. Nofrat Frenkel’s first person account, not disputed by any participant or published report, indicates that if ‘arrest’ is not the proper term under Israeli law to describe what happened, some equally harsh term would fit.
The Masorti Foundation leaders go on to recount the facts as related by Frenkel and others, and conclude the letter by writing:
November 20, 2009, 2:55pm
Orthodox Rabbi to Michael Oren: Arrest of Woman in Tallit 'Offensive and Dangerous'
By Gabrielle Birkner
Following the recent arrest at the Western Wall of a woman wearing a Jewish prayer shawl, or tallit, a prominent American Modern Orthodox rabbi has requested that Israel’s U.S. Ambassador Michael Oren meet with “a rabbinic delegation of American Orthodox rabbis who strongly support the right of women to wear a tallit and tzitzit.”
In a letter to Oren, penned this morning, Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, the spiritual leader of Ohev Sholom National Synagogue in Washington, D.C., called the arrest Monday of Nofrat Frenkel “offensive and dangerous,” adding: “You are ceding the Temple Mount and its holiness to a group of fundamentalist and exclusionary Jews who increasingly do not share that prophetic vision.”
An adapted version of the letter — it can be read in full, below — was published on former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum’s Web site FrumForum.
“If a Jew had been arrested for wearing a prayer shawl in any other country in the world, there would be outrage,” Herzfeld told The Sisterhood. “Just because it’s the state of Israel doing it doesn’t make it acceptable. It’s not coming from antisemitism, but it’s still religious persecution.”
November 18, 2009, 12:12pm
Woman of the Wall Arrest: A First-Hand Account
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
As they do at the start of every month, Israel’s Women of the Wall went to the Kotel on Wednesday to celebrate Rosh Chodesh.
But this time, instead of services concluding with the Musaf prayer, the experience ended with a 25 year old participant, a medical student who was wearing a tallit and carrying the group’s new Torah scroll, being arrested by police and charged with “performing a religious act that offends the feelings of others.”
The morning began pleasantly, Anat Hoffman told The Sisterhood. Hoffman chairs Women of the Wall (WoW) and is director of the Israel Religious Action Center, which is part of the Reform Movement.
Forty two women, including a group visiting from New York’s Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, gathered in the women’s section of the Kotel at 7 A.M. to pray the morning service. Then, because it is Rosh Chodesh Kislev, they sang Hallel, “in full voice,” said Hoffman. Sixteen of the women were wearing tallitot, she said, but “there was no complaint whatsoever from anyone.”
Ordinarily at this point in their service, WoW participants exit the Kotel plaza, walk around the enormous staircase leading up to the Dome of the Rock, proceed south and descend stairs to the archeological dig site nearby known as Robinson’s Arch, where they read from their Sefer Torah.
This is the location that Israel’s Supreme Court said they can use for their Torah readings, in its 2003 decision denying WoW the right to pray as a group at the Kotel.
This week, the women of WoW were celebrating a new Sefer Torah, one donated to them by Temple Sinai, a Reform congregation in Pittsburgh.
November 11, 2009, 11:30am
Orthodox Sage to Women in Tallitot at Kotel: You Are Deviant and Stupid
By Debra Nussbaum Cohen
A former Chief Sephardic Rabbi and current spiritual leader of Israel’s Shas religious political party, Rav Ovadia Yosef, in his weekly sermon last Saturday night called women who wear prayer shawls to daven at the Western Wall “stupid” and “deviants.”
He was speaking of Women of the Wall, a group of devoted and, dare I say it, devout Jewish women who believe that women may read from a Sefer Torah. Some of these women also wear a yarmulke and tallit, or prayer shawl.
This article from the Israeli newspaper Yediot Achronot says that Rav Yosef was speaking of the laws regarding saying Kiddush on Shabbat when he said:
…Women are obligated to perform Kiddush and can fulfill their obligation either by hearing a man perform the blessing or by reciting it themselves.
He went on to say:
“Tefillin (phylacteries) she must be careful not to lay. There are stupid women who come to the Western Wall, put on a tallit (prayer shawl), and pray.”
“These are deviants who serve equality, not Heaven. They must be condemned and warned of.”
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