Cops Bust 3 Women For Wearing Tallits At Western Wall

Three women were detained at the Kotel (Western Wall) today for wearing prayer shawls, tallits, in a manner usually worn by men but not by women.

Cops Bust 3 Women For Wearing Tallits At Western Wall
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

Three women were detained at the Kotel (Western Wall) today for wearing prayer shawls, tallits, in a manner usually worn by men but not by women, UPI reported.

The women belong to the protest group Women of the Wall, which campaigns for gender equality at the site, which is the second holiest in Judaism after the site of the Second Temple, which is located slightly southeast of the Kotel on the Temple Mount. The Kotel is part of the retaining wall of the Temple Mount and has been a site of prayer for Jews since the Second Jerusalem Temple was destroyed in the First Century C.E.

Israeli law bars women from doing certain ‘male-only’ religious practices at the Kotel and other state-controlled religious sites.

The three women were praying in the women’s section with approximately 40 other women when a female police officer told one of them to adjust her talit because she was wearing it like a man. Men drape their tallits over their shoulders and sometimes over their heads, as well, in both cases in shawl-like fashion rather than as a scarf. A male police officer then adjusted it.

After prayers, three of the women were detained. Police gathered their names and contact information and then released them, telling the women that they will be called later to come in for questioning.

The Kotel has been a flashpoint for gender issues and and for issues surrounding ultra-Orthodox attempts to control religious practice at public religious sites.

The state-appointed rabbi of the Western Wall is haredi.

Women have been arrested there for reading from a Torah scroll, carrying a Torah scroll, and for singing prayers out loud.

Ultra-Orthodox worshippers have also hurled chairs and other objected at Women of the Wall groups.

Police rarely arrest or detain them, however.

Comments

[Garnel Ironheart]

Can't blame the police. What's easier to deal with, 3 self-righteous feminists or 500 rioting Chareidim?

[Sarek]

That cannot be allowed. Could lead to dancing.

Why next, they might ask to be counted in a minyan!

So is it also illegal for a man to wear a sheitel?

[Bob Guthrie]

(Male) Ultra-Orthodox worshippers have also hurled chairs and other objected at Women of the Wall groups.

Haredim Chivalry at it's finest.

[Garnel Ironheart]

> So is it also illegal for a man to wear a sheitel?

Yes, but a toupee is permitted as long as you wear a kippah over it.

[ger]

When I visited Mea'Shearim I did have a couple of them come up to me mumbling something (my Hebrew is still work in progress). Was I being cursed at and does anyone have a nifty response I could hurl back at them?

[Dan]

Show us your tallits!

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

The organization, which uses the Hebrew name "Nashot HaKotel" (I'm sure the grammar gets up some hackles here) was not formed as a protest group, but as a group of shomrot mitvot who wanted to davven as a community at the holiest site in Judaism.
It's only becuase of the resistance to their presence that they're seen as a protest group, as oppossed to just a group of women looking for a Jewish religious outlet.
A relative of mine was davvening with them in their initial year, and got bit by one of the hareidi women. Beheimas!

[Litvish]

The haredim own Rabbinic Judaism in Israel.

It is their fiefdom and most of the seculars have ceded it to them.

[ger]

@Dan - too funny for words but hey I was wearing a maxi skirt, black of course, hiking trainers as I was going up some mountain or other in the afternoon and a navy cardigan beyond my elbows :-O maybe my face just screamed evil foreigner.

[Steven W]

Like the Torah gives detailed instructions on tallit. Not.

[Gevezener Chusid]

As far as I understand halacha, women are not required to wear a tallis but are not forbidden to do so either.

[ruthie]

i don't think women should wear tallit.
not at all.
but if a woman chooses to wear one....i respect
her and have no problem with it.
i would never wear tallit.
but let anyone pray to g-d in a manner that pleases them.
wearing tallit is harmless.
more important subjects loom.

[Yochanan Lavie]

I'm glad the police are finally going after real criminals and are leaving innocent child molesters alone. (Sarcasm).

[Bassy the Haredi Slayer]

All this meshugaas started in 1995 when the left's idol Yossi Beilin wanted to please the Haredim and gave the position of the kotel rabbi to Rabinowitz. Before that the kotel was open to everybody and even had a mixed section. 

Beilin is responsible not only to the death of thousands of Israelis but also to the haredization of the rabbinate. 

[Yaakov]

Ruthie:

You wrote:

[…]more important subjects loom.

Nice pun.

[Alter Kocker]

Typical-Haredim do nothing for the country except take welfare, drink coffee and vodka, smoke and fart all day long but they have the balls to demand that overworked and underpaid cops arrest a woman for wearing a prayer shawl in an objectionable fashion.

Would serve these petty dictators well if one of the women would haul off and kick his nuts over the wall.

[ThereBack]

Is this the infamous "Women off the wall"?

[Teddy]

http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/imprisoned-a-marriage-contact-femmes-freedom

Not entirely related, but this is about a Dutch inter-religious (and thus sorta secular) group for women, who in spite of a secular divorce are still trapped in a religious marriage. With the main group affected worst being Muslimas, "Orthodox" Jewesses come second, at least in the attention they are been given by the press.
Hindus and Roman-Catholics seem to round out the group of women trapped in religious marriages.