The right of Jewish women in Israel to pray where and how they choose received one setback and one small advance this week as it confronted opposition from the ultra-Orthodox religious establishment.
A group called Women of the Wall failed to persuade the Jerusalem Magistrates Court to force Jerusalem’s Laromme Hotel to allow it to conduct a Torah scroll dedication ceremony Monday night at the hotel.
But the same court ruled Tuesday that the hotel had to allow the women to conduct prayer services inside the hotel this Saturday.
The Jerusalem Religious Council had threatened to revoke the hotel’s kashrut license if it allowed the Torah dedication to take place. It intervened at the last moment, although the ceremony had been scheduled months in advance.
The hotel management, fearing it would lose its kosher certification, succumbed to the pressure. The dedication ceremony was held instead in the gymnasium of a nearby school.
The Women of the Wall group, organized a year ago during the First International Jewish Feminist Conference, also held a women’s Rosh Chodesh (New Moon) prayer service Tuesday morning at the Western Wall, which is known in Hebrew as the Kotel.
The Torah scroll was donated by the International Committee for Women at the Kotel, a support group of some 500 Jewish women from the Diaspora, many of them religiously observant.
A delegation of 30 women came to Israel under the auspices of the American Jewish Congress to present the Torah to the Israeli group.
AJCongress reacted angrily to the obstructionism of the Orthodox religious authorities in Jerusalem.
Henry Siegman, the organization’s executive director, issued a statement in New York on Tuesday, saying, “It is sad that the rabbinate in Israel should not hesitate to resort to such ugly tactics to deny Jews the privilege of dedicating a Torah scroll.”
TORAH PROCESSION THROUGH STREETS
The failure of the hotel to permit the dedication ceremony did not prevent the group from conducting a Torah procession through the streets of Jerusalem on Monday evening.
About 100 women and a handful of men marched from the hotel to the Yemen Moshe quarter, where the women recited evening prayers under a balmy autumn skyscape within sight of Mount Zion.
Torah processions are a familiar sight in Jerusalem. But in this case, it was women who were carrying the scroll and female voices singing the traditional Hebrew hymns.
The only discordant note was struck by a solitary Orthodox woman bystander, who shouted at the group. “You’re a bunch of weirdos.”
The Tuesday morning service at the Kotel went off smoothly, despite rabbinical and judicial restraints pending a decision by the High Court of Justice on whether the women may conduct organized prayer services at the Kotel.
There was no intervention by female orderlies employed by the Orthodox-controlled Religious Affairs Ministry to keep the worshipers under surveillance.
But the women’s services at the Kotel are known to anger the religious authorities, who object especially to women reading from a Torah scroll and chanting prayers.
The women are now banned from reading the Torah at the Wall, pending a court hearing next month of conflicting petitions from the women and the Religious Affairs Ministry.
The women are also under temporary court orders to recite their prayers, instead of chanting them. To read the Torah, they retire to a nearby archaeological garden site.
Women of the Wall has scrupulously observed both halachic injunctions and the orders of the High Court, where its case is still under judicial consideration.
But sources in New York said the group may attempt to hold a Torah service at the Wall later this week.
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