None of the young women blew a shofar or pass the Torah around, but they did say Hallel, and Mussaf, quietly. So police decided to barricade the 300 or so Women of the Wall and their male supporters at the back of the plaza, far away from the Wall, behind a heavy police barricade, a 15-foot buffer zone and two lines of police, according to the JTA report.
A WOW statement complained that they were “corralled into a small pen in the Western Wall Plaza, 150 meters from the Kotel. This, despite requests of Women of the Wall and MK Aliza Lavie, chair of the Knesset Committee on the Status of Women (Lavie in a letter to Minister of Internal Security Aharonowitz), to allow women to pray freely, according to their tradition at the holy site.”
It’s not perfect coverage, because it overstates the number of men doing things like blowing whistles. He makes it sound like this is what the men’s section was doing, and that’s not at all true. And none of us heard a megaphone, just the sound system as people led the prayers.
There is a serious contradiction in WoW’s arguament. The Reform Movement maintains that the Kotel is NOT a holy site and they have NO traditions for praying there.
On the contrary, Reform Movement’s tradition is NOT pray at the Wall and NOT to wear Teffilin.
These traditions are well over 100 years old.
That’s BRILLIANT! I NEVER thought of it that way!
Also, those women who are not Reform have no tradition that women wear tefillin, tallit, read from the Torah, sing aloud in public or do any of the other unique WoW practicies.