More on the Wall Women

At the risk of turning this entire trip to Israel into an extended investigation into the Kotel battles, I thought it only fair to post from Rabbi Avi Shafran’s just released Op-Ed on the incident. Shafran offers a more nuanced reading of the events of last November than has often been reported:

Ms. Frenkel’s detention was not spurred, as her champions (media and pundits dutifully trotting behind in step) have repeatedly proclaimed, by her having dared to wear a tallit, or Jewish prayer garment, at the site.  

Indeed, by Ms. Frenkel’s own account (Forward, November 24), she and 40-odd other “Women of the Wall” prayed as a group that morning in the main Kotel area wearing tallitot, without incident.  

But the tallit-garbed women did not stop there.  They sang the Psalms that comprise the song of praise Hallel “in full voice,” as per the testimony of Ms. Frenkel’s fellow activist Anat Hoffman (quoted on the Forward’s “Sisterhood Blog” in a November 18 posting).  Even then, though, recalls Ms. Hoffman, “there was no complaint whatsoever from anyone.”  (It is odd – well, not really – that the lack of any reaction by others even at that point went unnoted in the paper’s news coverage, or that of other mainstream Jewish media.)

It was only what then transpired that motivated the police to accost the group.  Ms. Frenkel had brought a Torah scroll hidden in a duffel bag to the site and removed it, according to her own account above, to publicly “read from the Torah opposite the stones of the Kotel.”  That brought others at the site to object (“We told them to butt out,” recalls Ms. Hoffman), and the police to intervene. 

He concludes thus:

People of all faiths, after all, are welcome at the Kotel – as they should be.  Out of respect, though, for the Jewish historical and spiritual connection to the place, public services there should respect a single standard of decorum.  And that standard should be, as it has been, millennia-old Jewish religious tradition. 

The Kotel is a holy place, and should not be made a battlefield by advocates for social or religious change.  Men and women, whatever their backgrounds or beliefs, are welcome and unbothered by the traditionally religious Jews who most often frequent the site, seeking only to pray there as Jews always have prayed.

Ms. Frenkel and her friends are clearly committed to a cause.  But promoting their particular view of feminism should not compel them to act in ways that they know will offend others, to seek to turn a holy place into a political arena.

We’ll have a fuller account of the latest on this on Sunday. But till then, once again, shabbat shalom from northern Israel.