Members and supporters of the Women of the Wall organization were subjected to body searches at the entrance to the Western Wall Plaza.
The Women of the Wall group secreted a Torah scroll into the women’s section of the Western Wall in order to hold a bat mitzvah ceremony during its monthly Rosh Chodesh service.
The executive director of the Women of the Wall was detained by police after smuggling a Torah scroll into the women’s section of the Western Wall.
When Alina Brenner began to plan her daughter Dana’s bat mitzvah, she considered throwing a party at a synagogue near their home in the Tel Aviv suburb of Hod HaSharon.
The Women of the Wall group held Passover holiday prayers at the Western Wall, but did not hold a priestly blessing ceremony, after being banned by Israel’s attorney general.
The Knesset Ethics Committee reprimanded a United Torah Judaism lawmaker for saying that members of a group that holds women’s prayer services at the Western Wall should be “thrown to the dogs.”
In the weeks since Israel’s government agreed to create a new, egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, ultra-Orthodox leaders and media have dialed up their opposition, threatening to derail what initially seemed a done deal.
Shmuel Rosner, who I greatly admire, apparently tried to excuse Israeli support for Donald Trump by writing that “Israel tilts rightward when it considers American politics” (“Like It or Not, Israelis Think Trump is Better for Them Than Clinton,” March 7.)
A month ago the board of Women of the Wall, leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements in North America and Israel announced that they had reached an agreement with the Israeli government that would for the first time give official recognition of these non-Orthodox streams of Judaism.
On the morning of Dec. 1, 1988, a group of about 70 Jewish women entered the sacred space of the Western Wall.
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