(Editor’s note: Please see comment below by Dr. Laurie Radovsky, a physician from St. Paul and member of Beth Jacob Congregation. She can be seen in the video, at about 1:40, arm in arm with Anat Hoffman, who was arrested a few minutes later.)
Where can you get arrested for leading Jewish prayers with a Torah in your arms?
At the Western Wall in Jerusalem, as happened to Anat Hoffman, leader of Women of the Wall, a group of faithful Jews that has met for prayer at the Kotel, the Western Wall plaza in the Old City, for many years. Hoffman also is executive director of the Israel Religious Action Center in Jerusalem.
Here’s the video of Hoffman’s arrest on Monday:
Hoffman was banned from the Western Wall for 30 days following her arrest, according to a JTA report.
Here’s more from the JTA story:
A Supreme Court ruling prohibits women from reading the Torah at the wall; the group said in a statement issued Monday that she was just holding the scroll.
According to the organization’s account, Hoffman, holding the Torah scroll, was leading about 150 women from the women’s section of the Western Wall in a procession toward Robinson’s Arch, where they are permitted to use the Torah scroll. Police tried to remove the Torah scroll from Hoffman’s arms and arrested her for not praying according to the traditional customs of the Western Wall.
“The arrest of a woman on the first day of the month of Av is a harsh reminder of the price that Israeli society may pay for its religious intolerance and fanaticism,” Hoffman’s group said in a statement.
In a post on the New Voices blog, Elle Weiss commented, about the fracas on Monday:
This is not the first time Anat and her minyan have been arrested, but this time, the price has been very dear. Anat has been banned from the Kotel for 30 days. No wonder assimilation rates are so high. This situation sounds more like Iran and Saudi Arabia, where religion is used as a tool to criminalize those who do not hold to the fundamentalist line. Why does the Israeli High Court bow to the religious right’s prohibiting women from reading the Torah out loud? I suppose the rabbis would have said the same to Deborah, one of the greatest judges in the Bible. Given her warlike reputation, I would have paid to see that confrontation.
Weiss also wrote, “Jewish people were once happy to even have the ability to read a Torah scroll without being arrested by outside authority, are now being arrested by their fellow Jews.”
— Mordecai Specktor
I planned my trip to Israel around being able to join Nashot HaKotel on Rosh Chodesh Av. The morning service itself was completely peaceful–well, on our side of the mechitza at least. I was shocked when Anat got arrested. What was seen as a provocative act by the police and the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) seemed like such an act of free speech and exercise of religious freedom. It is a sad fact that the average Israeli has abbrogated any religious rights and responsibilities to the Orthodox, to the extent that one is either “religious” (i.e. Orthodox) or secular.
It is interesting to me that there was nothing on the TV news channel that I watched that evening about Anat’s arrest. One of the other channels did apparently cover it.
Laurie Radovsky berates the fact that in Israel “one is either “religious†(i.e. Orthodox) or secular”. However, that is the situation everywhere, even in the U.S., due to the fact that the number of true Reform or Conservative Jews is tiny and therefore negligible. E.g., how many “Conservative” (i.e., members of Conservative congregations) Jews refrain from eating unkosher food or from shopping or cooking on the Sabbath? What matters isn’t to whom one pays annual dues, but whose and what tenents one follows. The vast majority of US Jews, their Reform and Conservative included, are as secular as Israel’s “secular”.
Moshe,
Your over generalization misses the point. I agree that the vast majority of US Jews, including Orthodox, are as secular as Israel’s Jews. The difference is that in the US, the Orthodox do not control religious rules and many aspects of life. They have zero legal authority. In Israel, the Orthodox establishment controls most religious and other semi-religious rules and the courts defer to them often.
Your “fact” about the number of “true” Reform or Conservative Jews is not a fact but an opinion. Your definition of a true Jew as someone who keeps kosher and does not shop or cook on Shabbat is inaccurate. There are 613 commandments the top ten of which Moses carried down from Mt Sinai. I agree that what matters isn’t to whom one pays annual dues, but what tenets one follows. Re-read the top ten.
If you are in the neighborhood for Shabbat, you might consider visiting Beth Jacob Congregation in Mendota Heights where Dr Radovsky and her family are members. You will find a community guided by the principles of Torah (study), Avodah (meaningful worship and work), and Gemilut Chasidim (acts of loving kindness). They may not be the biggest Conservative shul in the Twin Cities but the people who attend practice what they preach. As long as we are fortunate enough to have people like Dr Radovsky and other like minded Jews in this community we will be all right. Their numbers may be small or maybe tiny, by some definition, but they are definitely not negligible. Moreover “good” Jews have a disproportionate positive effect on their community.