JERUSALEM -- Israeli police say vandals have spray-panted slogans on the home of one of the leaders of a liberal Jewish women's group that has angered...
Sometimes, being in the right place at the right time, whether by coincidence or not, can lead to macro change. I don't know what is going to happen at the Western Wall in the future, but the times they are certainly a-changing.
Instead of fighting over the different forms of prayer, let us pray over the different forms of fighting, and ask that we reunite as one, with our hearts and ears, in respect and in dignity.
Thousands of ultra-Orthodox jeered, spit and threw rocks at the 400 'Women of the Wall' who prayed at the Western Wall today, according to the Jerusal...
Criminals. Troublemakers. Attention seekers. These are just a few of the names that Women of the Wall have been called. I've met these women, I've prayed with them.
For the last 24 years we have been going to the Western Wall with only one goal in mind: to pray as a community of women with Torah and talllit, in full voice. This struggle for our rights as Jewish women has put me in newspapers as well as in prison; however, my intention from the beginning was neither of these things. I simply wanted to pray at Judaism's holiest site.
By Michele Chabin Religion News Service JERUSALEM (RNS) Women who want to wear prayer shawls while praying in the women's section of the Western W...
Many years ago, when I was a feisty 16-year-old, I had a meaningful experience at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. No, it wasn't a religious awakening or a spiritual vision. Rather, it was a new understanding of the power of compromise.
The media is wild over the Women of the Wall controversy, and it's not hard to understand why. It deliciously combines women's rights issues, religion and, media's favorite topic, the Middle East, all in one bite-sized package of scandal.
Last week, 15 narrow-minded men tried to outlaw women saying the Kaddish at the Western Wall. There was so much blowback that they rescinded their ban. I cannot imagine, I do not want to imagine, that we have returned to a time where being a woman is both demeaning and dangerous.
By Michele Chabin Religion News Service JERUSALEM (RNS) The ultra-Orthodox rabbi in charge of the sacred Western Wall assured a government emissar...
As a male Orthodox Jew, I invite you to sit down with me and see where we can join forces in all those areas of discrimination against women where we can find common cause. I invite you to help me make good on the claim to all Jewish women: "Judaism glorifies you."
We end public readings of the Scroll of Esther with a blessing. "Blessed are you, God, who takes up our grievance, judges our claim and avenges the wrongs against us. You bring retribution on our enemies and vengeance on our foes." It's a tragedy when those we have in mind are other Jews.
This year on Purim, let us celebrate the courage to defy authority, to affirm and defend whoever are the "strangers" in our midst and whoever has been excluded from dignity and empowerment.
In a month where the predictable has vied with the unprecedented, may we be truly surprised by the reversal of policies of intolerance, and the respect for each others' own practices, beliefs and doubts.
Empathy is never easy. As a man, I confess that I have struggled to be empathetic to the cause of a group of women that has been coming to the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem for close to a quarter century to pray in protest of the religious freedom they lack. But ater this morning, the Women of the Wall have my respect and my support.
The Western Wall is a good place to launch a re-commitment to the Torah's vision of "one law," of unity without uniformity, and to Israel's imperfect but vigorous expression of democracy in action.
The only approach that is left is battle. Women of the Wall will continue to fight, not only for reclaiming the Kotel as public space, but also for all the other issues of religious pluralism in Israel that are so important.
JERUSALEM -- Israeli security guards at the Western Wall on Friday searched women worshippers arriving at the holiest place where Jews can pray for a ...
Nobody wielded a needle and thread like my Abuela. With deft rhythm and mesmerizing patterns, she conveyed a life story of painstaking work and imposed silence.
The Western Wall was liberated, yet free religious access has been obliterated. The Wall has been captured lock, stock and barrel, hijacked by a group of extremists who represent a minority among the Jewish people, a minority in Israel as well as around the world.
It becomes dangerous and frightening when the secular Knesset, the secular courts and the secular police bow down to the ultra-Orthodox fears and demands, while imposing them in the public sphere .
It's hard to believe, but you can be arrested for singing the Sh'ma out loud at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, considered the holiest site in the Jewish world. You can be arrested -- if you are a woman.
When women are detained and arrested at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for wearing Jewish prayer shawls and "endangering public peace" by intoning word and melody of prayer, we are all diminished.
I have cast my fate with Women of the Wall for a simple reason: I believe Jewish women have the same rights as Jewish men to pray at Israel's holy sites.
