Women of the Wall representatives arrested near the kotel after Torah reading
The organisation said that police had detained two of its senior members after claiming that they were blocking the thoroughfare
Two members of the Women of the Wall group have been arrested by Israeli police this morning after attempting to read from the Torah near the kotel, with the group saying that they are “fed up with the harassment and attempts to undermine our prayer.”
Yochi Rappaport, CEO of Women of the Wall, and Tammy Gottlieb, a member of the Executive of the World Zionist Organisation, were arrested after reading in the central plaza area near the kotel, after being prevented from doing so in the women’s section. The group said that despite there being room for people to pass, police claimed they were blocking the thoroughfare.
The organisation said that “We are fed up with the fact that, despite there being no legal or halachic prohibition, the rabbi of the Western Wall prevents us by every means from reading from a Torah scroll. We will read from the Torah on Rosh Chodesh and fulfil what the court decided long ago: Women of the Wall’s prayer, with a Torah scroll, is a local custom, and we are permitted to read from a Torah scroll at the Western Wall.”
The Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which manages the site, is vehemently opposed to the practice of women reading from the Torah, a practice which, while regular in Progressive Judaism, is only done by those at the outermost fringes of Orthodox Judaism. While Women of the Wall attempt to read from the Torah at the holy site every Rosh Chodesh (the beginning of each month of the Jewish calendar), the Heritage Foundation seeks to prevent them from doing so. It has prevented Women of the Wall from using any of the Torah Scrolls on the site, and seeks to prevent members of the group from smuggling Torah scrolls near the wall in order to publicly read from them there.
Yizhar Hess, Vice Chair of the World Zionist Organisation, said: “Let’s start from the end: Tammy Gottlieb, a member of the WZO Executive, and Yochi Rappeport, the CEO of Women of the Wall, were detained/arrested at the Kotel and are currently at a police station for ‘disturbing the public order’. Why? Because when they were once again forbidden from bringing a Torah scroll to the Kotel, the Women of the Wall decided to read from the Torah outside the plaza in the public area leading to the wall. There, the police suddenly claimed that they were ‘blocking the passage.’
“This is nonsense, of course, because in this area there is almost always a dense line of people waiting to reach the Kotel and/or the Temple Mount. The Women of the Wall managed to read from the Torah, but as soon as the reading ended, police officers grabbed Tammy and Yochi, ordered them to come with them, and took them to the police station. I love Tammy and Yochi. Two leaders.”
Just yesterday, Israel’s High Court held a hearing on why an upgrade to the egalitarian prayer section at the Kotel had not been implemented, despite a legal directive to that effect almost a decade ago. The hearing, which was marked by central and local government representatives blaming each other for the delay, did not reach a definitive outcome.
On Thursday morning, the executive of the World Zionist Organisation passed a resolution, saying: “The kotel is an historic, religious, and cultural symbol towards which the eyes of Jews in Israel and around the world look. It cannot be a place that doesn’t allow for a range of Jewish experiences and customs.
“In accordance with the decision of the Zionist Congress, we call on the Government of Israel to immediately implement the kotel compromise agreement which was spearheaded at the time by Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky and Cabinet Secretary Avichai Mandelblit.”
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