There is one main priority that the Women For the Wall have. We Women For the Wall want to make sure that when women come to pray at the Western Wall, the experience should be as profoundly meaningful as possible. We will do whatever we possibly can to help all women have that wonderful experience of connecting to G-d at this site, the Holiest place we Jews have in today’s world.
The Western Wall, the Kotel HaMaaravi, is the last vestige of the Holy Temple. It was built by King Herod over 2 millenia ago, and is the place from which the Shechina, the presence of G-d, is said to have never departed. This is the place to which Jews have turned from all corners of the world, to pour out their hearts to the Creator of the Universe, to beseech Him, to ask for His Divine Intervention, and to connect to Him.
We Women For the Wall recognize that we have a tradition of prayer, in and towards the Temple, which goes back thousands of years. The Kotel, more than just a “National Monument”, is a holy place, and must be treated as such.
Political battles, such as the ones orchestrated by Anat Hoffman and the “Women of the Wall,” do not belong at a place such as the Kotel. They have been engaging in political provocation at a Holy Site, and that must end.
We Women For the Wall beg Anat Hoffman and her companions – take your battles back to the Knesset and the Supreme Court, and leave the Western Wall alone. We want to come and pray peacefully, and you are disrupting the prayers of other women around you.
The Women of the Wall Show
The heart-rending picture of Anat Hoffman clasping a Torah Scroll is just part of a pantomime. She does not accept that what is written in it is at all binding on her. She does whatever she wants on the Sabbath and Holy Days, she eats whatever she wants, she keeps whatever laws she feels like keeping.. To her, the Scroll of the Torah is a ‘take-it-or-leave-it – whatever you want. � just an artifact to use for publicity.
For the past 26 years, on the first day of the new Hebrew month, Rosh Chodesh, Anat Hoffman has been leading a group of women to pray at the Kotel, the Western Wall. Sometimes she comes enrobed in prayer shawl, sometimes with a Torah Scroll so that she can chant the Torah reading for herself and other members of the group. These women have become known as �The Women of the Wall� � �WoW�.
These meetings have met with fierce opposition from other women who pray regularly at the Kotel, from religious men, from the authorities entrusted with the management of the Wall and from various sectors of society.
Overtly, Anat Hoffman is a sincere person who, with others, wants to assert her right to pray at the Wall the way she feels is appropriate. As such, her group has aroused much sympathy from the media and from groups in Western countries. The antagonism from the local rabbinate is interpreted as being undemocratic and as stifling the valid feelings of the women and preventing them from being able to serve Hashem in the way they wish. Their supporters quote various authorities who permit women to wear tallit and tefillin.
However, in an interview with the BBC, Anat Hoffman, leader of the Women of the Wall, revealed her true identity and purpose, so now we can analyze her motives more accurately.
–> Read more at Israel National News.
What a breath of fresh air Leah Aharoni’s article in jpost was today
I was afraid there was no voice for women who feel the way she does and did not know about
this organization
I am happy to say my brachot in the morning w/o feeling i am inferior or lack a purpose in the world of Yehadut
Let me know how I can help kol tuv
On the goals section of your website you have a factual error. You write that the Kotel is the last remaining vestige of the second temple, it is not. The remains of the second temple include the southern wall of the temple complex and a number of other remains found in the archaeological park situated to the south of the Kotel Plaza.
It is also not the last vestige of the temple but rather what remains of a retaining wall built around the Temple Mount to support the temple.
Please see following Women for the Wall briefing from Media Central on June 6 2013, in which Leah and Ronit articulate their stance. They are empowered women, speaking with passion and dignity.
http://vimeo.com/67795997