Women for the Wall founder Leah Aharoni rejected the notion that the young women are being used unfairly in the fight over the Western Wall. She said that her group was simply providing a “platform” for the teenage fervor about the Jewish holy site.

She said that she met with 40 young female leaders recently and they named the Western Wall as a major area of concern. “They were very disturbed,” she said. “That is their spiritual home.”

Yigal Canaan, an activist with The Liba Center, conceded that young women have a strategic role to play in countering Women of the Wall. His group is countering a now-stalled government plan, negotiated with Women of the Wall and other liberal Jewish groups, to create an egalitarian section just south of the traditional Western Wall. In a video released last week, The Liba Center accused the feminist group of seeking to “divide” the heart of the Jewish people.

“I think that in every struggle, young people are more enthusiastic and more ideological,” he said. The presence of women also helps counter claims that the Western Wall religious authorities are discriminating against women. Women want the “traditional way,” he said.

Aharoni said that the prayer service was a lesson for the teen girls: “This is a message for our daughters to learn. If it is something that concerns you, it is productive for you to voice that concern.”

Read more at The Forward.

Public speaking is not Peskin’s natural element, she readily admits. She’s more comfortable sharing a recipe for homemade play-dough or curried turnips on her blog, Penniless Parenting, but she took on a new challenge because she felt so strongly about it, she says.

She felt compelled to start the organization, Peskin said in a recent conversation from her home outside of Jerusalem, because “I had been bothered for a while by what Women of the Wall was doing. I was basically hoping the government would take care of the issue, but when they rejected a compromise that was offered, I thought people on the ground needed to take action.”

“They say they are about equality, but it’s not about equality, it’s about respecting the traditions of” the Kotel, she says. All holy sites, including the Vatican, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, El Aqsa Mosque and the Kotel have different rules for men and women that are designed to protect the sanctity of the site,” Peskin says.

“You can pray at Robinson’s Arch” – a site adjacent to the Kotel where both women and men traditionally worship – “and it’s the same Kotel,” she says.

“Women of the Wall is going on international media and trash-talking Orthodox Jews, traditional Judaism and Israel,” she says. “They compare traditional Jews to rapists and Israel to Saudi Arabia, where there is no freedom of religion and women have no rights.”

She says she fears that the group will have a negative effect on Americans’ perception of Israel.

“We’re very concerned because we know there is a large problem with Jewish people in the United States feeling very disconnected from their Judaism, and one thing that keeps them connected is their connection to Israel. When (Women of the Wall) tells people on their speaking tours to stop visiting Israel and give all your money to us so we can fight against the Israeli government, it ruins people’s connections to Judaism.”

Read the full article at Chicago Jewish News.

By: Rachel Avraham Published: December 8th, 2013″

Originally posted on the Jewish Press.

“Last week, the home of Women of the Wall board member Peggy Cidor was attacked with graffiti. The graffiti read: “Petty, watch out” and “Women of the Wall are villains.” Ever since this incident, before a police investigation has even determined who the culprits are, Women of the Wall have started a media campaign falsely claiming that “right-wing Orthodox journalists and bloggers false accusations” against the Women of the Wall organization “directly cause a real, physical threat and danger to the lives of the women.”

[…]

As the journalist who broke the story about the Women of the Wall leadership’s connections to anti-Israel organizations, I would like to stress that neither my articles published in the Jewish Press and Jerusalem Online News nor that of Varda Epstein and Bat-Zion Susskind-Sacks in the Times of Israel, nor Jonathan Rosenblum in the Jerusalem Post, nor Gil Ronen in Arutz Sheva, nor Daniel Greenfield in Front Page Magazine are responsible for the graffiti. None of us support violence and we found out about the story in the media, just like every one else. I am sorry from the bottom of my heart that Peggy had to go through this.

However, I would like to emphasize that just because Peggy was the victim of a graffiti attack does not give Shira Pruce, spokeswoman of Women of the Wall, the right to make false accusations against her political opponents before any police investigation has been conducted, especially when there is zero evidence indicating that there is any connection between the recent media exposure connecting the Women of the Wall leadership to anti-Israel groups and the graffiti.

As Ronit Peskin of Women for the Wall asserted in an interview I conducted with her last week in Jerusalem Online News, “It could have been someone with a personal grudge against Peggy, rather than someone prompted by the leaderships connections to anti-Israel groups, especially given the fact that she was never mentioned in [any news service that] wrote about the connections between Women of the Wall and anti-Israel groups. Furthermore, she is a relatively unknown board member of Women of the Wall, who is not really mentioned in any media about the organization. This undermines the argument that the recent news articles exposing the Women of the Wall’s leadership to anti-Israel groups has something to do with the graffiti.”

In that interview, it was also revealed to me that Women of the Wall accused Women for the Wall of being responsible for the negative media exposure. I would like to take this opportunity to state that I am not in any way connected with Women for the Wall. I am an independent pro-Israel writer who is not part of any particular group either for or against women praying with tallits at the Kotel. My only interest as a journalist is to expose the truth to the public, so that they can have the information needed to make their own decisions. I would also like to add that it is my commitment to the truth and not my religious beliefs that caused me to expose the Women of the Wall’s leaderships’ connections to anti-Israel groups to begin with. I would have wanted to also write articles exposing the links of a Haredi organization such as Neuterai Karta whose leadership is connected to anti-Israel groups, if such links were not yet public knowledge.

I would also like to note that I only became familiar with Women for the Wall once I exposed the connections between Women of the Wall’s leadership and anti-Israel organizations. Before I took this step, I never heard of them nor met any of their leaders. Even though I now have sympathy for them as a fellow victim of Women of the Wall’s slander, I continue to remain independent from them.”

Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/wow-blame-jewish-press-bloggers-for-graffiti/2013/12/08/

Analysis Interview with Women for the Wall Co-Founder Ronit Peskin: “Making conclusions about who is responsible for the graffiti is premature”

Dec 06, 2013, 07:00AM | Rachel Avraham

Haaretz reported yesterday that graffiti was sprayed on the home of Peggy Cidor, a board member for the Women of the Wall organization.  The graffiti read, “Peggy, watch out” and “Women of the Wall are villains.” Before a police investigation has determined who the culprits are, Shira Pruce, spokeswoman for Women of the Wall, told Haaretz that the journalists and bloggers who recently exposed the connections between their leadership and anti-Israel organizations are responsible for the graffiti.

“The connection is clear – incitement and false claims attacking Women of the Wall and their board members in the media directly cause a real, physical threat and danger to the lives of the women,” Shira Pruce stated. “We hold those who have been disseminating lies about Women of the Wall and our leaders responsible for this rise in tensions.”  However, on their facebook page, Women of the Wall made other accusations: “The bad press is initiated and disseminated by Women for the Wall and their colleagues. It is time for them and for the others to take responsibility for their words and actions, which incited at least one crazy person to attack a woman at her home.”

In light of the renewed tensions, Mark McQuillen offered to mediate between Women of the Wall and Women for the Wall. Women for the Wall co-founder Ronit Peskin responded that she was happy to attend a mediated session, while Shira Pruce stated: “No I am not happy and I am not to going to do this.  Ronit and her colleagues have spent the last month attacking Women of the Wall’s leaders in the media- now claiming that we are anti-Israel and anti-Orthodox. Finally this morning, we see the “fruits” of Women for the Wall and Jonathan Rosenblum’s efforts- one person was crazy and committed enough to that messaging to attack one of my leaders at her home. It is time for Ronit to take responsibility for her actions and words before someone gets hurt.”

Women of the Wall incites violence via false accusations 

Following these events, in an interview with Jerusalem Online News last night, Ronit Peskin stated: “The fact that the same organization, Women for the Wall, that put itself in physical harms way to stop violence against Women of the Wall members is accused of instigating violence is a miscarriage of justice.   We are an organization committed to traditional Jewish prayers and values at the Kotel. Traditional Jewish values imply loving and respecting every one, even those with whom we disagree.   On the other hand, Women of the Wall has incited violence and egged on non-peaceful protesters, at the very same time Women for the Wall are trying to calm down those protesters.  We have this on video.”

Peskin claims that her efforts to pacify protesters at the Kotel have brought about good results: “We’ve been so successful in calming down protesters that this past Rosh Hodesh was the most peaceful one yet, according to all news reports.  We view this as a testament to our success in propagating the message of peaceful coexistence at the Kotel between all Jewish denominations, as well as peaceful relations within the community in general.”

Meanwhile, Peskin noted the absurdity in the fact that Women of the Wall has accused her organization, as well as right wing bloggers and journalists of inciting hatred and violence while Women of the Wall is “inciting violence via false accusations against Orthodox Jews, as well as right wing bloggers and journalists.”  She stressed: “Making conclusions about who is responsible for the graffiti is premature before the police investigation discovers who placed graffiti at the home.   A few months ago, the Chief Rabbi and the Rav of the Kotel, as well as a few other people,  got death threats signed by Women of the Wall.  When this happened, Women of the Wall claimed that they were being framed.  It is ironic that now the tables are turned and they are accusing others, when in reality the graffiti was signed anonymously and could have been any one.”

See the rest of the interview here.

It was, perhaps, not the most auspicious setting for Ronit Peskin’s first-ever public speech.

The 25-year-old self-described housewife stood in front of a crowded room at the biggest Jewish conference of the year, the Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly in Jerusalem. She was about to verbally assail Women of the Wall — a group most in the audience supported. On the stage with her were Yesh Atid Knesset member Aliza Lavie, representing a party that championed religious pluralism; Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky, who’s spearheading a compromise on the Kotel; and Women of the Wall’s chairwoman, Anat Hoffman, a confident public speaker with decades of experience.

By the end of the event, Lavie was telling Peskin she should run for Knesset.

A Cleveland native and mother of three who moved to Israel at age 18, Peskin says she generally tries to avoid the spotlight. Most of her frequent Facebook posts are about cooking and household economy — publicity for her blog, Penniless Parenting.

But since April, Peskin has also served as co-founder of Women for the Wall, a traditionalist group that aims to maintain the status quo at the Kotel and that opposes Women of the Wall — helping to draw thousands of girls to the women’s section to counter WOW’s monthly services.

In her GA speech last week, she didn’t hold back.

“When Anat Hoffman and other WOW board members mistakenly compare Israel to Saudi Arabia, claim that women here are oppressed and have no rights, and that Conservative and Reform Jews get arrested for praying in their way, it’s doing irreparable harm to our nation,” she said. “The answer is not to let a tiny but vocal minority ruin the experience for everyone else.”

In the conversation that followed, she ratcheted up the rhetoric, asserting that Women of the Wall want the Kotel “all year, all the time.”

“I was a little more sharp than I needed to be,” Peskin told me a few days after the event. “I am a peace-loving person. I have compassion for both sides and I want to work things out, but I have a sharp side.”

Peskin knows that many GA delegates sympathize with Women of the Wall’s message of pluralism but feels that “once we shared our views, we won over a lot of people.”

However nervous she was before the event, Peskin seems to have emerged with a burst of confidence. Lavie has asked to meet with her, and she’s looking into organizing a U.S. speaking tour — targeting both her Orthodox base and Reform and Conservative skeptics.

But while some first-time speakers would be flattered by a lawmaker recommending they run for Knesset, Peskin remains skeptical, and was unsure whether she would even want to meet with Lavie.

“I have my reservations because her party is not exactly pro-haredim, and I’m concerned they’ll try to use me to hurt the haredi community,” she said. “My husband and I were discussing the idea of my being in politics. I wouldn’t want that at this stage in my life. I want to make a change through home. A lot of my activism is through the computer.”

Read more at the JTA.

When American Jewish leaders gather in Jerusalem for the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) General Assembly later this month, they’ll have the opportunity to hear from top Israeli political leaders on a variety of issues. They’ll also have the chance to witness the first public conversation between two groups of Israeli women at the center of a heated disagreement over what the future of the Western Wall should be.

On Monday, Nov. 4, Women of the Wall (WOW) will celebrate the beginning of a new Jewish month and its 25th anniversary by doing what it’s been doing for most of that time: holding female-led prayer services at Judaism’s holiest site, the remnant of the ancient temple in Jerusalem that is known in Hebrew simply as “the Kotel.”

They were the only women publicly involved in this debate – until, that is, the formation of Women For The Wall (W4W) in May 2013. A self-described “grassroots group” of Orthodox and Haredi women, W4W opposes any changes to the current restrictions that prohibit women from collectively praying together at the kotel – enjoining practices that are de rigeur in most non-Orthodox congregations, like women wearing prayer shawls and reading from the Torah.

Yet, over the past few months, efforts by a number of Israeli organizations to put together public conversations between representatives of both groups have been stymied – which makes the upcoming meeting on Nov. 11 between WOW Chair Anat Hoffman and W4W Director Ronit Peskin all the more noteworthy.

“There have been many invitations to them to join us in a discussion; they refuse to acknowledge our presence,” W4W’s Peskin said of WOW. “This is the first time they’ve consented to appear, and we think it’s wonderful. You can’t have a real discussion of an issue by only hearing one side of it.”

The groups that have tried to coax WOW into public discussions with W4W in the past are reasonably well-established. Gesher, a 40-year-old organization that works to bridge the religious-secular divide in Israel, tried to convene a conversation between women on both sides of the Kotel issue earlier this year, without success. Media Central, a non-profit, independent, media-liaison service that for the past seven years has worked to support foreign journalists in Jerusalem, managed to get representatives from WOW and W4W to appear — but only by agreeing not to have them on stage at the same time.

“The fact that the Women of the Wall — the supposedly more open-minded group — refused to have anything to do with or any conversation or dialogue with Women for the Wall, I found amusing,” Aryeh Green, Media Central ‘s director, said. “And somewhat off-putting.”

Read the full article at the Jewish Journal

Americans see the struggle of Women of the Wall as a crucial battle for human rights and women’s status because they believe both are under threat in Israel. Israelis see the struggle as a marginal issue because they believe neither is under threat. The story of how that perceptual gulf has developed, and how a 25-year-old organization exploited it to catapult itself from relative obscurity to worldwide fame, is indeed a story with “strategic implications.” It’s the story of how Israelis opposed to their countrymen’s choices at the ballot box have sought to generate outside pressure to overturn those choices by creating a false narrative of an Israeli slide into fundamentalism and fascism….

Female worshipers, it now seemed obvious, were being barred from a holy site that should be open to everyone because Israel was kowtowing to the demands of Haredi extremists. Consequently, the issue received extensive press coverage. And while WOW didn’t create this wave, it rode it expertly, staging deliberate provocations whenever the story seemed in danger of dying…

It was easy for WOW to obscure the police’s legal justification and claim that the force was simply kowtowing to Haredi demands, especially given the Haredim’s vocal (and physical) opposition to WOW’s services. That in turn played straight into the “exclusion of women” narrative—a connection WOW made explicitly…

WOW insisted on continuing to pray among the Orthodox worshipers, rather than among egalitarians at Robinson’s Arch… Relocating away from the Haredi worshipers would defeat Hoffman’s main goal, as she herself defined it to the Jerusalem Post last December: “I want to see and be seen.” In short, her interest is not in holding women’s services at the Wall per se, but in doing so where they will be clearly visible to others who find them objectionable.

Indeed, WOW’s anti-Haredi agenda was clearly visible this past July, when Haredim finally managed a peaceful counter-demonstration. On the day of WOW’s planned monthly service, as many as 7,000 Haredi high-school girls arose at the crack of dawn to reach the Wall first. According to police, they completely filled the women’s section, leaving no room for WOW to pray near the Wall as usual—which was obviously the point. The organization and its supporters were furious. “We feel like we’ve been betrayed by the police today because where we’ve been made to pray today is not a place of prayer,” Sachs said.

What neither WOW nor its supporters explained is this: What were the police supposed to have done with the young Haredi worshipers? Banned them from the Wall? Kicked them out when WOW arrived? The implication was clear. WOW’s demand for open access to the Wall applies only to itself; Haredi women are free to come en masse only when WOW doesn’t want the site…

During the years when Israel was negotiating with the Palestinians and ceding territory unilaterally, the left-wing media had no need for Women of the Wall, and consequently had no interest in it. But for the past few years, not only were there no negotiations or withdrawals, there wasn’t even any public pressure for them: Most Israelis attributed the lack of negotiations to Palestinian intransigence and thought unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank would simply create another Gaza-style rocket base.

Consequently, for the left, it became imperative to ratchet up international pressure by making Israel “unpopular with the new and progressive America, including liberal Jews.” In this campaign, Women of the Wall proved useful, hence its sudden rise to media stardom. And in that sense, WOW is indeed a symptom of a broader Israeli problem. But this problem isn’t the “exclusion of women.” Rather, it’s the left’s inability to reconcile itself to the Israeli electorate’s rejection of their chosen policies.

Read the full article in Commentary Magazine.

The activists, known as Women of the Wall (WOW), have been seeking for 25 years to challenge the Orthodox customs that govern the Western Wall and limit how and where women can pray. In recent months, as their campaign has gained momentum, it has also garnered serious push back – mostly from other women.

WOW activists have described their female opponents as trapped in a male-dominated paradigm, in which they are simply doing the bidding of their “rabbi-handlers.” But actually the counter-protest is not driven by men, but by a group called Women for the Wall. The group says it is tapping into Orthodox frustration with WOW’s attempts to subvert longstanding Jewish tradition in the name of women’s rights and religious freedom.

“I just got so fed up,” says cofounder Ronit Peskin, who decided to take action after WOW declined a compromise proposed by Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky that would have allowed them to pray at a separate, less conspicuous area of the Wall, albeit with some limitations.

So in April, she and Leah Aharoni established Women for the Wall, and began making calls to rabbis and politicians mobilize a show of support for Orthodox tradition. They then helped orchestrate flood tides of schoolgirls and other women opposed to WOW, who came pouring into the women’s prayer section so that there was no room for the activist group.

Read the full article at the Christian Science Monitor.

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.

Read the full article at the Jewish Press.