Fashion police

Jerusalem’s newest spiritual expert in Jewish observance doesn’t have a long beard, sidelocks or even a kippa. The new spiritual expert in Jerusalem wears a blue uniform and packs a gun and handcuffs. After all, who needs to consult a rabbi when the Jerusalem police are on the scene? In a surprising event last Thursday, police detained Deborah Houben for wearing her tallit (prayer shawl) “like a man” during the Women of the Wall monthly Rosh Hodesh service. Though technically women are forbidden to wear tallitot at the Western Wall, police have allowed the practice since the Women of the Wall movement was founded 23 years ago. But with Houben’s detention, police made their case clear: “female” tallitot are acceptable, but ”male” tallitot are not to be worn by women.Wait, tallitot have genders? Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby elaborates: women’s tallitot are colorful and worn around the neck. Men’s tallitot are either blue and white or black and white and worn draped across the shoulders, he explains.“They know it’s forbidden to wear a men’s tallit in the women’s section,” says Ben-Ruby, adding that the rules were agreed upon in order to protect the “holiness of the site.”“What if the lines on the tallit are purple?” asks Women of the Wall founder Anat Hoffman. “What shade of purple is for women? What shade of purple is for men? Are we really reducing the police to making these kinds of calls?” The incident occurred after the Women of the Wall had completed the morning prayer service at the Western Wall and were on their way to the Robinson’s Arch area, located away from the main Western Wall plaza, where women are allowed to read from the Torah.A month ago, Jerusalem police commander Nisso Shaham personally adjusted Houben’s tallit, moving it from around her shoulders to around her neck. A number of rabbinical students also had their tallitot readjusted by police.“I get personally offended when they try to touch me or touch my person, especially when I’m in the middle of tefilla [prayer],” Houben says. Out of the more than 60 women attending the service, 47 were wearing tallitot. After Houben was detained, the Women of the Wall moved their service to the police station near the Jaffa Gate, where they read from the Torah.Ben-Ruby cites the 2001 High Court of Justice ruling that requires worshipers to uphold the customs of the holy site. However, the High Court ruling does not include any clarifications about what type of tallitot women are allowed to wear.“A policeman can decide that women cannot wear tallitot at the Wall,” explains Hoffman. “He can say this offends the feelings of others and he can say that she can’t wear this tallit [at all]... But they cannot decide what kind of tallit women can wear and what way they will be wearing it on their bodies.”Hoffman also points out that the Women of the Wall have been around for 23 of the 45 years that Jews have had access to the Western Wall since 1967, raising questions about how long a tradition must be in place before it becomes a “custom of the site.” According to Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, the rabbi of the Western Wall, all women are forbidden to wear tallitot in the Kotel Plaza. He says that police were wrong to detain only Houben for wearing a male-style tallit and instead should have arrested all of the women wearing tallitot. “The State of Israel doesn’t want to arrest people who come to pray, but it is forbidden [for women] to put on a tallit,” he says.“It’s hard for me to take it seriously. I think it’s a little funny,” admits Houben. “But I feel like that’s coercion – why are the police suddenly getting to decide? What the heck, I’ve come to pray, why does anyone get to comment on that? The more I think about it the more crazy angry I get.”Houben says she was frustrated when the policeman who detained her removed his kippa after leaving the Western Wall compound. She wanted to ask him, “How would you feel if someone told you how to wear your kippa?” Ben-Ruby denies that the police are acting as religious experts in constituting what is a women’s tallit and what is a men’s tallit. “Police don’t invent these things,” he says. He accuses Houben of being the ringleader of Women of the Wall and encouraging other women to wear “inappropriate” tallitot in the male style.On Thursday, Houben was detained for three hours and then released. During her detention and questioning, she was fingerprinted, photographed and now has a case on file with the police. She says she believes she’ll continue wearing her tallit in the same manner, though she’ll miss the next Rosh Hodesh service due to a family wedding.She was amused to hear that the police have singled her out as the source of the “problem” of women wearing tallitot like men. “I have never even so much as helped another woman put on a tallit,” she says, “let alone do anything other than pray and sing and mind my own business!”

Fashion police

With last week’s arrest of Deborah Houben for wearing a ‘masculine’ tallit during Women of the Wall’s Rosh Hodesh services, it seems that law-enforcement officers are now deciding the style for ritual garments.

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