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http://forward.com/articles/164436/anat-hoffman-arrested-for-singing-at-western-wall/

 

ISRAEL - ACTIVIST WOMAN LEADER ARRESTED FOR SINGING PRAYER AT WESTERN WALL IN JERUSALEM

 

By JTA - October 17, 2012

 

Jerusalem police arrested the leader of Women of the Wall, Anat Hoffman, for singing at the Western Wall.

Anat Hoffman was arrested Tuesday evening for “disturbing public order.” The organization posted on its Facebook page Wednesday afternoon that Hoffman was in court. “She is being accused of singing out loud at the kotel, disturbing peace,” the post read.

Two other members of the organization, Director Lesley Sachs and board member Rachel Cohen Yeshurun, were detained Wednesday morning by police for the same offense. They were released after being interrogated and fingerprinted at the police station in the Old City. According to the organization, the women admitted to wearing a prayer shawl at the Western Wall but not to disturbing public order.

Women of the Wall has held a special prayer service at the Western Wall each month for Rosh Chodesh, or the beginning of new month, at the back of the women’s section at the Western Wall for the last 20 years. Tuesday night and Wednesday morning’s prayer services for the month of Cheshvan were scheduled to be held together with delegates to the conference marking Hadassah’s 100th birthday.

Hoffman was arrested Tuesday night after she had begun singing the “Shema” prayer, according to Haaretz.

In 2003, Israel’s Supreme Court upheld a government ban on women wearing tefillin or tallitot, or reading from a Torah scroll at the Western Wall.

In August, Jerusalem police arrested four women for “behavior that endangers the public peace” and wearing prayer shawls. They were forbidden to enter the Western Wall Plaza for the next 50 days, according to the organization.

In June, Israeli police detained a woman wearing a tallit at the Western Wall and later questioned her for four hours after asking her to wear her prayer shawl as a scarf. In May, three women from Women of the Wall were stopped for questioning after praying at the Wall in prayer shawls. They also had been asked to wear the tallitot as scarves rather than shawls.

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Subject: Israel - Women Activists Detained by Police When Praying at Western Wall

 

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A tallit (Hebrew: טַלִּית‎‎) - plural - tallitot, is a Jewish prayer shawl. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tallit

Tefillin  תפילין) are a set of small black leather boxes containing scrolls of parchment inscribed with verses from the Torah, which are worn by observant Jews during prayers. The hand-tefillin, or shel yad, is placed on the upper arm, and the strap wrapped around the arm, hand and fingers; while the head-tefillin, or shel rosh, is placed above the forehead. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tefillin

 

ISRAEL - "WOMEN OF THE WALL" ACTIVISTS DETAINED BY POLICE WHEN PRAYING AT THE HOLY WESTERN WALL IN JERUSALEM

 

By JEREMY SHARON  - 08/19/2012

 

Women of the Wall member raises Torah

Photo: Marc Israel Sellem /The Jerusalem Post

 

Marc Israel Sellem /The Jerusalem Post 

A member of the Women of the Wall group wears tefillin while making a prayer.

 

In the latest of several similar incidents, police detained four women from the Women of the Wall activist organization at the Western Wall plaza Sunday morning for wearing prayer shawls.

The women were questioned for more than two hours and then brought to the Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court, where they were served with a restraining order forbidding them from entering the Western Wall plaza for 50 days.

Israeli law, upheld by the Supreme Court, stipulates that it is forbidden to conduct a religious ceremony “contrary to accepted practice” at a holy site, or one that may “hurt the feelings of other worshipers.”

This law is interpreted to include women performing religious practices at the Western Wall traditionally done by men in Orthodox Jewish practice, such as reading from a Torah scroll, wearing tefillin or a tallit, or blowing a shofar.

Approximately 50 women from the organization assembled in the women’s section of the plaza Sunday morning for the prayer service for the new month, many of whom wore prayer shawls, or tallitot, traditionally worn by men.

The four women who were detained were wearing black and white or plain white tallitot, whereas the rest of the group were wearing more colorful prayer shawls.

The police generally tolerate the wearing of the decorative tallitot by women, and only take exception to women wearing the black and white, blue and white or completely white shawls, which they view as being the preserve of male worshipers.

Lorraine Skupsky, 62, was one of the women detained and banned from the Western Wall plaza.

“It is disgraceful and reprehensible, and it was abhorrent that women are denied equality in front of the Western Wall,” said Skupsky, who immigrated to Israel last December. “It is totally disrespectful and denigrating to women to be treated in this unequal manner in the Jewish state,” she added.

Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police requested several times that the four women who were wearing “men’s” tallitot remove them.

When they refused, the four were detained.

In previous instances, women received restraining orders of a week or 10 days plus a fine if they broke the restraining order.

Ben-Ruby said the severity of the restraining order shows that the courts see the issue “in the same level of severity” as the police.

“It is not a law, it is a decision from 2003, the decision of the High Court of Justice is that the women must behave according to the customs of the site,” said Ben-Ruby. “The customs say men with tallit, women without tallit. It is like a women putting on tefillin,” he said.

Ben-Ruby explained that the police will not detain women who are not wearing a multicolored “women’s” tallit, draped around the neck. They will only detain women who wear their tallit “like a man,” referring to the more traditional black and white or blue and white prayer shawls worn folded around the shoulders.

In a similar incident in June, a woman praying with the Women of the Wall was detained and banned from the site for seven days for wearing a black and white tallit, and another three women were briefly held, also for wearing “male-style” prayer shawls.

Anat Hoffman, the chairwoman of Women of the Wall, denied that the frequent incidents are designed to provoke media attention, despite being aware of the legal issues, saying instead that the law is unjust.

“When Rosa Parks rode on the front of the bus it was illegal,” Hoffman pointed out, referring to the famous civil rights activist in the US who protested the practice of segregation in the American south. “But in fact it does matter where you sit. And similarly, no-one should be telling women to take off their tallit.

“This is a struggle to liberate the Western Wall from the dictates of a small group of fanatic extremists which has taken over the site,” Hoffman said, adding that efforts until now to change the law through legislation in the Knesset have failed.

In response to the incident, Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz issued a statement expressing “shock and deep sorrow for the behavior of a group of women at the Western Wall this morning,” and called on “the authorities to prevent this repetitive and provocative behavior.”

“Instead of uniting with the holiness of the place, we are forced to be witnesses every month to an extremist political struggle of an extremist and provocative group, which wants to harm the holiness of the site and the feelings of the worshipers.

“The Western Wall is a place of unity for the Jewish people and not a place for polarization, and the sharpening of differences.”