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Photo: Women of the Wall on Facebook
Women of the Wall praying with a Torah scroll last month
Photo: Women of the Wall on Facebook

Women of Wall: Partition locked to stop women reading from Torah at Kotel

Move comes a month after two men passed Torah scroll to women, enabling them to beat ban; group tells rabbi: Let my Torah go!

Western Wall Chief Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz on Tuesday locked the partition between men and women to prevent men from handing Torah scrolls over to women praying on the other side, the Women of the Wall organization said.

 

 

The organization, which demands equal prayer rights for women at the Western Wall, last month celebrated a landmark victory, after two men transferred scrolls over the mechitza (partition dividing men and women) to let women read from a full-sized Torah scroll at a service to mark the start of the Hebrew month of Iyar.

 

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Tuesday's actions, the group said, was an effort by Rabinowitz to enforce his ban on women from taking any Torah scrolls into their area.

 

The Women of the Wall at the Western Wall on Tuesday (Photo: Yael Gilboa)
The Women of the Wall at the Western Wall on Tuesday (Photo: Yael Gilboa)

  

"'Sheriff' Rabinowitz won his battle today against the six lovely Bnot Mitzvah," the group said in a post on Facebook. "After a year of preparation and excitement, they could not read from a Torah Scroll at the Western Wall. With police barricades and locks, he has locked the Torah out of women's reach. But he will not win the war. We say today loud and clear: we demand Torah for women at the Kotel. Rabbi Rabinowitz, LET MY TORAH GO!" 

 

Women of the Wall reading from a full-sized Torah scroll last month. (Photo: Facebook)
Women of the Wall reading from a full-sized Torah scroll last month. (Photo: Facebook)

 

While men are given the use of 100 Torah scrolls, the group says, Rabinowitz has imposed a ban on any external scrolls being used at the Western Wall, to prevent women from taking their own scrolls into the compound, the holiest site in Judaism.

 

In October, the organization managed to smuggle a miniscule Torah scroll into the Western Wall women's section for hold their first ever Torah reading by a woman at the site.

 

In 2013, Jerusalem District Court issued the precedent-setting ruling that women were allowed to read from the Torah at the Western Wall. However, regulations at the site, which only allow for the use of its own Torah scrolls and prohibit worshippers from bringing books from the outside, had prevented them from doing so until now.

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.20.15, 09:21
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