August 20, 2012 | 12:08 pm

Shame at the Holiest Site in Judaism

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

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For those who do not receive emails from the Israeli Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center (IRAC), I refer the following to you for your information and for action. Anat Hoffman, the Executive Director of IRAC sent this notice out this morning and it is self-explanatory and a shocking display of intolerance and misogyny by the Ultra-Orthodox rabbinate that grown in unprecedented influence within the government of the State of Israel, in the affairs of the Jewish state and in the every day lives of Israeli citizens. Please sign this petition and send it along to your friends.

August 20, 2012

Dear Rabbi John,

Yesterday four women were detained at the Western Wall, each for wearing a tallit. The authorities say they were disturbing the public peace according to regulation 201 A4 of the Israeli legal code. The punishment for this crime is six months in prison. They also broke regulation 287A by performing a religious act that “offends the feelings of others.” The punishment for this crime is up to two years in prison.

When these four women wore their tallitot they challenged the division at the Western Wall. This is a place where men pray, dance, sing, sound the Sofar, read Torah, celebrate b’nei mitzvah, wave the lulov, and express their Judaism in any way they wish. Women, on the other side of the partition, stand silently in the little space that remains.

IRAC fights all layers of gender segregation in Israel, and I believe that the Kotel is ground-zero in the fight against gender exclusion. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. taught us, one of the main strategies of non-violent struggle is to “dramatize” the injustice. There is a real need for drama to actualize how far the situation of women in the public sphere in Israel today is from the dream of the State’s founders. Israel’s founding document, our Declaration of Independence, had a vision of full equality for all the citizens of Israel irrespective of religion, race, or gender.

According to that vision, we are working to create a reality that is currently hard for Israelis to even imagine. In this we mean a Kotel where Israeli families will be able to pray together as a family, a Kotel where families can celebrate a bat mitzvah, a Kotel where egalitarian services can be held proudly, instead of hidden out of view from the Western Wall Plaza. I want to live to see it and for that I need your help.

The key to changing the status quo is in the hands of the authoritative that run the Kotel, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation. This is why IRAC and the IMPJ are about to go to Israel’s Supreme Court to demand a change in the make-up of the Western Wall Heritage Council, which is currently made up completely of Orthodox Jews. We want this body to resemble the real diversity of the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora.

Thank you for already signing the petition. Please help us collect signatures by forwarding this email, using our special tell-a-friend link, or by clicking here and then forwarding that link to as many of your friends as you can. We have over 10,000 names already, and we will reach our goal of 50,000 if everyone helps us get five more names. With that kind of support, the Israeli Government will see that we cannot be ignored. Days like yesterday must stop.

L’shalom,
Anat Hoffman
Executive Director, IRAC

Action Alert: Help the petition grow

Please help collect signatures for this petition. You can do it by forwarding this link to your friends or forwarding this blog entry.