Feminist Protest at the Western Wall

On Friday morning I went with Katie, a friend from Hebrew class, to the Western Wall for a service at 7:00am given by a group called "Women of the Wall".  This is a group of feminist Orthodox Jewish women that believe that women should have equal rights as the men at the Western Wall.  

For a little bit of background, the Western Wall aka the Wailing Wall is a section of the original wall that went around the Temple Mount back in the Second Temple Period (Herod's temple, the temple during the time of Christ). Jews regard the Western Wall as holy and they gather in front of the wall to pray and worship.  The Western Wall is divided into two sections, one for men and one for females. The men are allowed to wear prayer shawls, hold worship services, read from the Torah, and sing and dance, while the women are not.  The "Women of the Wall" are a group that protests these unequal rights, and once a month they gather at the Wall on Friday at 7:00am to hold a worship service in the back of the women's section. 

Katie and I showed up early Friday morning and joined their service.  There was a group of about 50 women, reading the service from the Hebrew prayer book and singing together, most of them wearing prayer shawls.  Many of them were American born Israelis, and it was a wide variety of ages, anywhere from late teens to older women.  At one point in the service, I noticed an Israeli soldier with a little camcorder, filming us, and I turned to Katie and asked her why. She told me, "Well... this group has been known to get a little riotous in the past...". Oh the adventures I get myself into sometimes!  But everything stayed calm and proceeded smoothly and when we finished the service, we moved outside the area of the Wall down into the archeological park for the reading of the Torah and a lot of men in support of the group joined us.

This was such an interesting event to participate in, once again mostly for the people we were able to meet and talk to, particularly one girl who helped us to understand what was going on and where we currently were in the Hebrew prayer book.  I may go back again!

Videos I took of the group:

Singing as we walk away from the Wall

Reading of the Torah. Note how she passes it around and people kiss it. Also note how there are men present as well.

May 11, 2013 Update:
Yesterday there was an article in the NY Times about this group I participated with! This is a piece of the article:
"JERUSALEM — Thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews tried to block a liberal women’s group from praying at the Western Wall on Friday morning, creating a tense standoff in the latest flash point of a broader battle over religion and identity that has engulfed Israel.
Heeding calls from their rabbis, religious teenage girls turned up in large numbers to protest the group’s insistence on praying at the wall in religious garb traditionally worn by men. The girls crammed the women’s section directly in front of the wall by 6:30 a.m., forcing the liberal women to conduct their prayer service farther back on the plaza. There, hundreds of police officers locked arms in cordons to hold back throngs of black-hatted Orthodox men who whistled, catcalled, and threw water, candy and a few plastic chairs."