Woman's arrest at Western Wall highlights Orthodox Jewish influence

Vita Bekker, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 21. 2009 11:08PM UAE / November 21. 2009 7:08PM GMT

A Jewish man covered in a shawl prays at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, where it is illegal for women to formally worship. Gil Cohen Magen / Reuters

TEL AVIV // Nofrat Frankel did not expect her monthly prayer at Judaism’s holiest site at the crack of dawn one day last week to be cut short by her arrest and to prompt an uproar from Israel’s ultra-religious establishment.

The 25-year-old medical student at southern Israel’s Ben Gurion University was detained by police on Wednesday after ultra-religious worshippers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City became incensed when she wrapped herself in a prayer shawl as she prepared to read from the Torah, the Jewish biblical scroll.

In Orthodox Jewish tradition, politically dominant in Israel despite its minority status, both activities are permitted only for men. Her actions also violated an Israeli high court ruling that requires visitors to the Western Wall to adhere to the site’s Orthodox etiquette. Critics say the ruling “converted” the Western Wall into an ultra-Orthodox shrine.

The incident highlights escalating tensions between Israel’s powerful ultra-religious Jews, who are part of a fast-growing minority, and advocates for more liberal streams of Judaism that represent a much larger portion of Israeli society and that call for an active role for women. Such reformist currents of Judaism are also more popular than the ultra-Orthodox movement outside of Israel.

Gilad Kariv, the head of the more liberal Jewish Reform movement in Israel, condemned the arrest as a “shameful” act for the country. He said: “Millions of women in the Jewish world enjoy the right of wrapping themselves in a shawl and taking an equal part in public prayer services. But in the state of the Jews and at the holiest Jewish site, police detain a woman who prays according to her conscience and beliefs.”

The arrest of Ms Frankel is likely to be used as a weapon by activists in Israel and abroad who claim that religious intolerance in the country is on the rise.

Indeed, an annual religious freedom report by the US state department said last month that Israel discriminates against religious groups including more reformist Jewish streams, Muslims and Christians and condemned the ultra-Orthodox monopoly on such important issues as marriage, conversion and burials.

The controversy over Ms Frankel’s actions also highlighted the ultra-Orthodox intransigent approach towards women, especially because it occurred less than two weeks after Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Shas, a key religious political party, lambasted women who wear a prayer shawl as “stupid” and said they do not act “for heaven’s sake” but because “they want equality”.

Such condemnation from Israel’s religious establishment has not deterred challenges to its power by groups like Women of the Wall, of which Ms Frankel is a member and which tries to push for more Israeli tolerance of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism. For the past two decades, the group has met once a month at Robinson’s Arch, a site close to the Western Wall where women’s prayers are tolerated.

Last Wednesday, however, the group decided to push the envelope and move its prayer service to the segregated women’s section located right near the Western Wall.

Anat Hoffman, an activist in the group and a prominent advocate for the Jewish Reform Movement in Israel, said during a tense joint television interview with Shmuel Rabinovich, the Western Wall’s chief rabbi, that this was the first time a woman was arrested at the site for donning a prayer shawl. In explaining the group’s actions last Wednesday to shift to the main women’s prayer section, she said: “Once in a while, we need to push the establishment and challenge it. The [Western Wall rules] need to change.”

Ms Hoffman said her group has demanded that its services be permitted to take place at the women’s section and not in its designated – and more isolated – prayer site, for one hour per month.

Mr Rabinovich, however, left no doubt that he rejected any such request. He said of the group: “Every time they come, they cause provocation at a site that should unite everyone. Their goal is to bring controversy to the Western Wall.”

Commentators said the Women of the Wall’s attempts are futile as long as ultra-Orthodox parties maintain their strong political power in Israel. Religious parties have been part of 26 out of a total of 31 governing coalitions since the establishment of Israel in 1948, and typically have the strength to topple a prime minister who challenges their ideology.

The Jerusalem Post, a right-leaning Israeli newspaper, wrote last week in an editorial of Ms Hoffman’s demand for more liberal Western Wall rules: “Only when the political system is reformed so that religious zealots lose their disproportionate influence, can this particular wrong be righted.”

foreign.desk@thenational.ae