Women of the Wall free to pray following haredi schoolgirl protest

Police give okay to women's activist group after Orthodox girls blocked Women of the Wall prayer service last month.

By JEREMY SHARON
Women of the Wall say the ‘Shema’ near the Western Wall 370 (photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
Women of the Wall say the ‘Shema’ near the Western Wall 370
(photo credit: Marc Israel Sellem/The Jerusalem Post)
The Women of the Wall prayer rights activist group will hold its monthly prayer service at the Western Wall on Wednesday, and the Jerusalem Police have said that they will accompany the group members from the complex’s entrance to the Western Wall plaza so as to prevent anyone from interfering with their prayers.
Last month, thousands of haredi schoolgirls filled the women’s section entirely, preventing WoW from holding its service there. The group had to conduct it instead at the entrance to the Western Wall plaza complex, away from the wall.
The group expressed intense displeasure with the arrangements last month, saying that at the very least, the police should have allowed WoW to pray in the area facing the wall behind the main prayer sections for men and women.
WoW has announced that it will blow the shofar during the Wednesday morning prayers, as is customary in the month of Elul, and will also bring a Torah scroll to the entrance of the complex.
Bringing private Torah scrolls into the area is not permitted, so only the scrolls held by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which administers the site, are available for use. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall and chairman of the foundation, has not allowed WoW use of these Torah scrolls.
In April, the Jerusalem District Court ruled that women should be permitted to don prayer shawls and pray according to their own customs at the Western Wall, something that was hitherto prohibited.
Before the ruling, the police were enforcing a 2003 Supreme Court ruling and Justice Ministry directives that upheld the Regulations for the Protection of Holy Places to the Jews. Those regulations, dating from 1981, forbid performing religious ceremonies that are “not according to local custom” or that “may hurt the feelings of the worshipers” at the site, where local custom is interpreted to mean Orthodox practice.
This prevented women from performing Jewish customs that usually only men carry out in Orthodox practice, such as wearing a prayer shawl or reading from the Torah.
On Wednesday, Rabinowitz’s office announced that both he and the Jerusalem Police were calling on haredi representatives in the Jerusalem Municipality to prevent haredi school girls from going to the Western Wall this month, in light of security concerns ahead of the last day of Ramadan and the large number of Muslims expected to arrive in the Old City and the Temple Mount.
Haredi politicians from United Torah Judaism, both national and municipal, were the driving force behind recent protests against the Women of the Wall.
Rabinowitz said he also called on WoW to come “according to the previous arrangement” and not to wear tefillin.