Nashot HaKotel

Michelle's Reflections on this past Monday--- 

Monday marked the 25^th anniversary of Women of the Wall, a women’s rights advocacy group protesting for the recognition of a woman’s right to wear tallit and t’fillin, conduct a collective, out loud minyan, and to read Torah at the Western Wall/Kotel.  Every Rosh Hodesh the dedicated women of this group gather at the Kotel and conduct services, singing out loud with a fierce ruach that is unrivaled.  And every month, throngs of seminary girls and ultra Orthodox women are bused in from around the city and charged with the task of preventing these women from completing their prayers.  What upsets me the most is that these young girls, who have no ideological basis for even understanding the irony of what they are doing, are actively preventing other Jewish women from fulfilling the mitzvot which they have chosen to accept.  It’s nothing short of a shanda.

I don’t wear tallit or t’fillin, although when I was younger I did wear a tallit.  I enjoy participating in services by counting in a minyan, leading t’fillot, reading Torah, or having an aliyah, although I don’t go to morning minyan everyday.  And I support a woman’s right to be able to choose to take on the mitzvot if she wants to.  Here’s how I see it: Women are not obligated to take on the mitzvot.  Some people say it’s because women are already on a higher spiritual plane than men are, and so to take on the mitzvot is unnecessary and redundant.  I think this reason came about in recent decades in order to placate confused religious women.  A more historically accurate reason that women are not obligated to wear tallit and t’fillin, to read Torah, or count in a minyan, is because in a traditional, heteronormative, patriarchal society, the women were home taking care of the children, cleaning the house, and cooking the meals.  Thus, women are not bound by what we refer to as time-bound mitzvot, because when would they find the time?? 

This, however, is not the case anymore.  So, if a woman, who is not obligated to (read: “not obligated to” not “forbidden from”) wear tallit and t’fillin, count in a minyan, or read Torah chooses to take on these mitzvot, despite being on some higher spiritual plane, then the woman should be celebrated for making that choice.  Men fulfill these mitzvot because they are required to.  How much more amazing is it that a woman who is not required to chooses to.  And that’s why, even if I don’t choose to take on all of the mitzvot, I support women who do, and support their right to be able to express these mitzvot in all of the same contexts as men.

Yesterday, I davened with Women of the Wall in honor of their 25^th anniversary.  Although I support their fight, I was mostly just curious to see what WOW was about, and to see if the horror stories I had heard were true.  I came away from the experience with two very conflicting views.  I arrived at the women’s section of the Western Wall, and headed toward the little corner in the back carved out for WOW.  The corner was surrounded by on-duty soldiers, who were there to protect the women davening from women protesting.  Both groups of women were Jewish women—it was upsetting to think that one group actually needed to be protected from the other group.  I watched as a seminary girl (dressed in the typical uniform of a long black pleated skirt, a blue button-down collared shirt, and a black sweater, with black tights and black shoes) tried to gain entrance into the WOW section.  Two soldiers stood shoulder to shoulder, refusing to let her in.  Who knows why she was trying to get in—was she going to cause trouble or did she really want to daven—but I imagine the soldiers challenged her in some way, maybe by asking where her tallit was, and unable to answer the question, she left.

Everyone agreed that yesterday was a pretty calm day as far as davening in the women’s section goes.  Sure there were a few pissed-off looking religious women, but I think most of them just came to see what WOW was all about, as opposed to protesting.  There were a few whistles (women can’t shout because men aren’t supposed to hear their voices, lest they be aroused), and one woman even barked like a dog.  Before the davening started, one woman stood just past the line of soldiers shouting things in Hebrew, but I didn’t understand what she was saying.  I decided yesterday that the older women protesting make me even sadder than the younger girls.  The younger girls may be too scared of authority to ask questions, or may be too young to even recognize what oppression looks like, but older women ought to know better.  Like it or not, we are all sisters, and we are fighting their fight with them.

Davening with WOW at the Kotel was an amazing experience, and I was almost moved to tears.  I have never, ever, experienced a Hallel service quite like the one led by our talented shlichei tzibor.  When I looked at the Kotel, my voice raised in song with other Jewish women, I knew that I was part of history.  While it is not uncommon for many, many minyanim to be occurring at the same time on the men’s side, for many reasons including restrictions on women’s singing and the fact that women don’t count in a minyan in the religious community, all davening on the women’s side takes place individually.  I always say that my favorite part of being Jewish is the community—which makes it pretty hard to have a meaningful t’fillah experience when I am praying quietly by myself.  To have been a part of a women’s minyan, praying out loud, at the Kotel, is something I will never forget. 

Andy, for his part, stood in a special section in the Kotel Plaza, behind the women’s section of the Kotel, where the men supporting WOW were able to stand.  He said he now understands what it must be like for me when we go to services at more religious communities and I must sit behind a mehitza, a special section designated for women so they don’t distract men from their prayers.  He had no idea what was going on.  Andy did describe an interaction with a religious man which greatly upset me, even though I wasn’t there.  The man looked distraught and kept preventing other men from praying by yelling that they were crazy and were not Jews.  Last time I checked, my religion is one of love and acceptance, whose guiding principle is “love your neighbor as yourself”.  So maybe, the Jews spouting hate are the ones who need to reconsider whether they are following their religion.

About halfway through the service, I began to experience some conflicting opinions.  I agree that women need a place where they can daven out loud and together, and that the Western Wall should be one of these places.  This of course, assumes that women are able to be counted in a minyan, which is an ideal I was brought up with, but with which some Jews do not agree.  I was concerned, however, that the out loud praying of WOW might have been disturbing other women who were at the Kotel to pray on their own, and did not want to be counted in our minyan.  A person does not need to count themselves in our minyan, and should not be penalized for choosing to pray on their own.  If I were a woman who had gone to the Kotel to daven on my own, not wanting to be counted in an all-woman minyan, but not wanting to actively protest it, either, I would be very distracted and have a hard time focusing on my prayers if WOW was there at the same time I was.  Sure, WOW was in the back, and the other women could daven closer to the front.  Or maybe they could have come at a different time—I just don’t think that other women should have to suffer because of our decision to pray together.

Davening is always better and more meaningful with ruach—I truly believe that.  But I wondered if the group I was part of yesterday morning was filled with ruach to make a point, instead of letting the ruach come from their souls.  There came a point where I wondered whether we were showboating to make a point instead of davening with our hearts.  For example, even before davening started, the women who were gathering began to sing loudly, so as to overpower the loudspeaker from the men’s side leading t’fillot for the men.  Maybe the loudspeaker was activated intentionally to overpower the women, but that didn’t mean that the women needed to sing loudly in order to overpower and offend the men.  In addition, at many points during the davening, women who were stationed at different locations within the group to help everyone follow along signaled to the group to sing louder, to give more energy and more ruach.  To me, davening is authentic—if we were at a sports game it would make sense to make a scene and encourage us to be louder, but davening comes from the heart, not from a desire to upstage someone else.  I suppose that this is what a protest is all about—making a scene to make a point.  But I don’t think that scene needs to involve the holy text of the morning prayer service, and I don’t think it needs to take place in the holiest place on Earth, especially when other people are there for their own, personal reasons. 

I think there were people from both sides (in support of and against WOW) who were at the Kotel yesterday morning just to make a scene, whose hearts were not truly invested in the service but, rather, in what the service represents.  And I think that there were people there who just wanted to egg on the other side, to see how far they could push it.  And these are the people that I don’t want to associate myself with.  I was overwhelmed at the ability to daven out loud, as part of a women’s minyan, at the Western Wall.  It’s not something I’ve ever been able to do before.  But I was there to daven, not to make a scene.  It’s a fine line, but it’s an important distinction.