Emotions ran high as thousands protested the first time the Women of the Wall were allowed to pray in tallitot and tefillin.
By IN JERUSALEM STAFFKids at the kotel 370(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem)
Friday morning, Rosh Hodesh Sivan, 6:15, the Western Wall Plaza.Thousands – some say close to 10,000, some say even more – of young yeshiva students and girls from seminaries and ulpanot await the arrival of the Women of Wall members, who will be permitted, for the first time in 24 years, to pray there wearing tallitot and tefillin. Cups of hot coffee, water, plastic chairs and even stones, along with curses and the deafening sounds of whistlers, “welcome” the Women of the Wall – about 300 members and supporters.Access to the women’s section, the usual location for their prayers, was barred by the seminary girls, and prayers eventually took place at the main plaza. Due to the crowd and the severe lack of space, the prayers were hardly audible, and they were recited in a mixed-gender service.At the end of Hallel and the Torah reading from a printed book (as a Torah scroll was not permitted), the first bat mitzva was held, with 12-year-old Devorah Leff, carried on the women’s shoulders after her reading.At the end of prayers, hundreds of police officers escorted the women to the Dung Gate, where they were immediately ushered onto shielded buses – at which more yeshiva students threw stones and spat all the way to Mount Zion. •
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