Wednesday, April 30 Jerusalem

Wednesday, April 30, Jerusalem

I traded the 9:30 am gemara class for some extra sleep, then headed for another walking tour of a different part of Jerusalem. Today, I headed down King George and Keren Ha’yasod streets, with a stop at the Israel poster shop, a basement store that is home to thousands upon thousands of posters.  

On my last trip, I was able to find a multi-layered series of posters showing the development of the Old City and the Second Temple. While modern technology makes this possible on the computer, there’s nothing like standing in front of your students, Vanna White style, and flipping through the posters to show change over time.

Alas, the shop was closed so I continued on to Yemin Moshe (the Windmill), my favorite place in all Jerusalem (OK, the world) as it has an outdoor patio perched on the hillside overlooking the walls of the Old City.

Next to King David Street and the several antiquities dealers with literally thousands of antique (and even ancient) Jewish ritual objects. I passed on a megillat esther (as well as a sefer Torah).

Since my last visit, Jerusalem has built a light rail line up and down Jaffa Rd. (and to Mt. Herzl and Ammunition Hill on the other sides).  

With a stop at the Machane Yehuda market, I took a walk through the craziness.

For the knowing ones, the “Levy Brothers” have a falafel stand at the far end of the market so that was my late lunch.

I got word from the Brandeis group that they would be rolling into Jerusalem about 5 pm so I decided to skip the afternoon Yeshivah classes so I could welcome Shayna. Because of a last-minute switch in hotels, she ended up, literally, across the street from me.

When the kids were given a few hours of free time for dinner, we headed off for vegetarian meal,

got a chance for Shayna to video-chat with Marci and Rivi before getting her back to the hotel.

Before getting to bed, I remembered that Rabbi Stacy Friedman had told me that I would be in Jerusalem for Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the new month in the Jewish calendar. 

This is particularly important since it also marks the monthly prayer/demonstration by a group called “Women of the Wall.”  WOW, as they are known, formed in order to challenge the (male) ultra-Orthodox hegemony of the prayer space at the Western Wall. With backing from the Israeli government, the Wall (or Kotel, in Hebrew) has been designated a synagogue space.  This means that, according to traditional rules for prayer, men and women are physically separated.  

(found this image on the internet, which shows the sections well)

It also means women cannot sing, nor can they pray, nor “worse” of all, read from the Torah. In order to force the question and press for change, an Israeli woman named Anat Hoffman leads a womens prayer service on Rosh Chodesh.  Over the past few years, and especially on the months that WOW conduct a Torah reading service, they have been harassed by 1) men who pray so loudly on their side of the divider that they try to drawn out the women’s voices, 2) ultra-Orthodox women who organize by the thousands upon thousands to fill the women’s space at the Wall so that the WOW group, literally, has no space in which to pray, or 3) arrest, as has happened to Anat Hoffman on several occasions. Through a complex legal battle, political negotiations, and huge support from North American Jewry, WOW has achieved a status quo that pretty much allows them to pray and forces the Israeli authorities to protect that right should any in the ultra-Orthodox community seek to prevent them from praying.

In fact, Anat is in the middle of complex negotiations to literally change the physical layout of the area leading up to the Kotel. While non-Orthodox Jews were granted the right to have egalitarian prayer at a different section of the Wall (under Robinson’s Arch, for those who wish to google the space), WOW are pressing for an expansion of the courtyard space so that it can have 3 sections (men, women, both) instead of the current two sections.  

That requires overcoming some architectural challenges, not to mention religious and political obstacles since this prayer space will connect to the holiest piece of religious real estate in the Abrahamic traditions. Under the governmental leadership of former Soviet refusenik Anatoly Sharansky, a variety of ideas have been proposed, each frought with its own profound challenges.

Rabbi Stacy Friedman urged me to attend the WOW service.  So, I checked their website http://womenofthewall.org.il to discover that it begins at 7 am. Ouch. All right.  All right. I’m in Jerusalem.  Get out of bed early!  I did…and it began what was, I think, the fullest Jewish day of my entire life…