This Week

WALL DIVIDED

from page 7

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"It is a slippery
slope and if we
fall down it,
the Kotel will
be split up
into a lot of
little kotelim."

— Rabbi Avi Shafran

"I want to
stress that [the
Wall] belongs
to all Jews.
But it is an
Orthodox
place.

"

— Rabbi Avraham
Jacobovitz

TV#

12/8

2000

10

Walled Encounters

Undeterred, local Israeli women
continued to meet monthly to pray at
the Wall, numbering at times less than
50 and at other times, several hundred
strong. Equally undeterred, and equal-
ly varied in numbers, were those who
felt there was no place at the Wall for
such activity. Those persons, mostly
haredim, let the women know of their
displeasure through taunts, including
yelling and pushing. Police officers
who patrolled the area did nothing to
stop the attacks.
Because the police didn't interfere,
WOW petitioned the country's court
system in March 1989 to allow the
women equal access to the Wall and
have police protection while doing so.
Reform Rabbi Marla Feldman of
Southfield said the requests made by
WOW were reasonable: to pray at the
Wall 11 hours of the year, to wear tal-
lit and to read aloud from the Torah.
"What WOW asked for is so mini-
mal. What they asked for is so reason-
able," she said. It is the others, who
are denying them this, who are being
unreasonable and unbending."
The request, however, was an affront
to the practices of some who pray at
the Wall. To some, it violated the
notion of kol isha, literally meaning,
"the voice of the woman", something
considered provocative. This notion
appears in the Talmud and has been
interpreted by some throughout the
ages to mean that a man who is pray-
ing may be swayed, or seduced, by the
voice of a woman. To those who hold
fast to this notion, a woman can sing
only in a group and a woman should
not be heard alone during prayer.
"A woman voice is a part of her beau-
ty, part of her allure. It is attractive,"
said Rabbi Avraham Jacobovitz of
Machon I2Torah/The Jewish Learning
Network of Michigan in Oak Park. He
added that the focus during prayer
should be on God, not on a woman.
A woman wearing a tallit is an affront
to some for several reasons. For one, a
passage in Deuteronomy says a woman
should not dress in a man's clothes;
because the prayer shawl has been con-
sidered a masculine item, a woman
should not wear one. On another note,
women are exempt from any command-
ment that is time specific in nature.
"Women should not feel that they
need to do this to assert themselves
religiously," said New York-based
Rabbi Avi Shafran, director of public
affairs for Agudath Israel of America
and American director of Am Echad,
an Orthodox Jewish organization that
supports Israel.
These arguments are at odds with the

"What WOW
asked for is so
minimal.
What they
asked for is so
reasonable.

— Rabbi Marla Feldman

women who support WOW, including
Rabbi Marla Hornsten of Temple Israel
in West Bloomfield, who once attended
a WOW-sponsored megillah (Torah
scroll) reading at the Wall.
"Although wearing a tallit is not
commanded of a woman, it doesn't
mean women are prohibited from
wearing one," Rabbi Hornsten said.
"If a woman wants to wear a tallit, we
encourage her to do so."
To Haut, the concept of kol isha is
easily dismissed. "It is out in the open,"
she said, adding that the women sing in
unison. "There are airplanes flying by.
On the men's side, there is constant
noise; there are a number of minyanim
at any given time. When we come, we
do not stand near the mechitza, and
the men cannot hear us."
After Israel's high court issued a tem-
porary injunction in mid-1989 against
the women, ordering them not to pray
aloud or wear tallitot at the Kotel or
they would face a short jail term, the
justices wrestled with the case. Three
separate commissions were ordered.
Testimony was -heard. Arguments
volleyed the issue back and forth.

A Feminist Agenda?

'Although
wearing
a tallit is not
commanded
of a woman, it
doesn't mean
women are
prohibited
from wearing
one.

— Rabbi Marla Hornsten

Among the public, the debate raged
openly. Battle lines were fairly clearly
drawn. The major points of conflict
were feminist women vs. traditional
male culture, American concern vs.
Israeli tradition and progressive
Judaism vs. observant Judaism.
In the first argument, many opposing
WOW have insinuated the women are
pushing a feminist agenda at the cost of
the Wall's sanctity. Am Echad's Rabbi
Shafran, in an opinion he penned and
distributed, argues the movement is
marred by the "unmistakable odor of
standard-issue militant feminism."
Disagreeing is Phyllis Chesler, a board
member of the International Committee
Women of the Wall (ICWOW), who
grew up in an Orthodox home.
"Those who say this is merely a fem-
inist struggle do not understand this
struggle," she said.
Chesler, a New York-based psychother-
apist, scholar and feminist author, says
that since the first prayer session occurred,
feminist and religious members of WOW
have undergone a metamorphosis.
"Women who came with feminist
intentions have become much more
involved in the prayer movement, while
women who started out with prayer as
their primary intention have become
more feminist as well," she said.
Rabbi Feldman, who lived in
Jerusalem in the early 1980s, sees the

