Outrage

The last time I wrote about Women of the Wall, it was about the calm before the prayer. There was nothing else to write about, unless I wanted to write about lending my roommate my siddur and my tallit and watching her pray when she hadn't done so in a long time. The time before that was when we got chairs thrown at us and the police arrested the chair-throwers. At that point, it seemed like the police were on our side. The Haredim were the wrongdoers; we were following the law, and they were still harassing us. But this. How did this happen?

I was not there, as I have been in the States for a month and a half now, but there is a blog post about the experience by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg here. I am shocked. I am speechless, save for the word "What?" "What?" The women were not doing anything that they hadn't done month after month, year after year since 1988. Daven most of the service at the back of the women's section - march with the Torah, singing, to Robinson's Arch - read the Torah - dance - daven Mussaf. Month after month. So why now? Why are we suddenly the bad guys again? Did they really think we were going to change our pattern now? Was it not just a few months ago when we were almost physically harmed by an army of chairs?

I say "we" this time not because I was physically there, but I feel like the Women of the Wall are still part of me. Watching the video I remember the times when I walked down that path, the first time in the rain with Haredim yelling at us, the time when we sang "Not By Might" in Hebrew and the woman next to me said she'd have to tell Debbie Friedman that someone had translated her song, the time Mr. Dubin was there. There is no video of the women standing outside of the police station, but I can see it in my mind. I know that spirit. I can imagine Nofrat Frenkel standing next to Anat Hoffman as she was arrested for the same charges for which Nofrat was arrested just seven months ago. "We then kept singing for some time, because, Nofrat said, Anat (who was inside the police station somewhere) would be able to hear us. (Nofrat knows from personal experience, natch.)" Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg said. Can you imagine what that must be like? Can you see her reliving that experience?

And why are the Women of the Wall put through this ideal? For being female and wanting to pray on Rosh Chodesh, which Orthodoxy declares a "women's holiday." Because wanting to sing out their prayers loud and proud is somehow wrong. Because reading the very text that is the basis of our religion is somehow wrong.

It's been said before by many people and I'll say it again: the Kotel doesn't belong to the Jewish people. The Kotel belongs to the Haredim, and that's an offense against all of us who call ourselves part of the Jewish people.

Architecture mixed with a bit of politics

Today marked my architecture class's second trip to the Old City, and the last trip for a while. For the most part it was nothing remarkable--just a tour through a Herodian mansion and a visit to the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount. However, current events dictated that we must try to take a look at the newly rebuilt Hurva Synagogue, which we did.

Long story short: the Hurva Synagogue was originally built in the 1860s and was destroyed twice. In 2002 the Israeli government decided to rebuild the synagogue, and it was rededicated last Monday night. This was part of what lead to the "Day of Rage" riots among the Palestinians last Tuesday. The New York Times explains why they're so upset:

The synagogue’s new white dome blends in with the city’s ancient monuments holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews. Because of the topography, seen from certain points around the city, it rises above the Islamic shrines of the compound revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, and by Jews as the Temple Mount, including Al Aksa Mosque.

In Damascus, Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, said the synagogue’s dedication signified “the destruction of the Al Aksa Mosque and the building of the temple,” according to Agence France-Presse.

Okay, so that sounds a little bit drastic. Really, the rebuilding of one synagogue is going to lead to the destruction of the Temple Mount as we know it? However, take a look at this (also mentioned by Ha'arez):

According to a centuries-old rabbinical prophecy that appears to be coming true, on March 16, 2010, Israel will begin construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem. During the 18th century, the Vilna Gaon, a respected rabbinical authority, prophesied that the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, which was built during his day, would be destroyed and rebuilt twice, and that when the Hurva was completed for the third time, construction on the Third Temple would begin.

And the Third Temple will logically be built on the Temple Mount, and thus Al-Aksa Mosque will be destroyed... it makes sense. Except for the whole "we're going to build the Third Temple now!" part. I don't see the moshiach anywhere; do you? Besides--according to Ahuva's recent sermon, we weren't meant to resume the whole animal sacrifice thing anyway.

Anyway! The brand-new rebuilt synagogue is entirely locked, but we got to go in and see it anyway. See, our teacher is Israeli, and Israelis are pushy and tend to get their way when they're only up against a couple of custodians who answered a classmate's very insistent knock at the door. The synagogue is beautiful. Take a look:

The outside photo is not mine because silly me expected to be able to find a recent photograph online, but apparently not. They're being very secretive about this place, probably because of all the riots and such. But really--how hard is it to take a picture of the outside?

I don't know what to think about the controversy surrounding this synagogue. Sometimes it seems like people--Palestinians and (particularly haredi) Israelis--will riot over just about anything, given the chance. It's not like we're in a position to build the Third Temple, no matter what the Vilna Gaon said all those years ago. Yet--the fact that the dome rises above everything else does make a certain political statement. I read it somewhere--"We're here to stay," it says. The Israelis are here to stay, in the heart of the Old City, in the heart of East Jerusalem, in the heart of Eretz Yisrael... can you blame them for being upset?

Police make all the difference

Police make all the difference in the world. Remember my first trip to Women of the Wall? It was pretty miserable, both due to the rain and due to the haredim's hatred. There were police around, but we didn't feel guarded; this was just a month after Nofrat Frankel was arrested. The next month the police made a barrier between us and the haredi women and it went better, though one woman was hit by a haredi. This month--G-d. What a difference.

The assault from the men's side was totally unexpected. They did not wait for us to start davening, but instead threw a bunch of chairs over the mechitza while we were still gathering, even breaking a leg off one of them. It wasn't even 7am, and the police hadn't arrived yet. Lots of chairs (and a video starting in the middle of it):

Notice how the women attempt to make light of it. This is how you have to think at Women of the Wall--ironic comments are about all we can do.

Needless to say, I thought that the early chair throwing was an indication of a very bad morning ahead. It's not exactly a good sign. However, the men eventually stopped throwing chairs and the police came over to ask what happened and help clean up the chairs. Someone also said that they arrested the chair-thrower, which was the first good sign of the day. (According to YNet, they arrested two chair-throwers even!)

Once we started davening, the police formed a wall between us and the haredim. Surprisingly, the haredi women didn't bother us this time--one woman muttered about how the moshiach was never going to come this way when she walked past us, but that was it. The men were also surprisingly subdued. There was a little bit of shouting, but that didn't last. They mostly walked/danced around in a circle singing, supposedly drowning us out in their ears. For the first time ever I could hear every word the service leader said; the sounds from the men's side didn't overpower us at all us. Oh--and Mr. Recite Hallel at Us was back today, too. That was sorta weird--it almost seemed as if he was supporting us, except we knew better. (He was screaming "gevalt" last month.)

At the end of Hallel we were actually able to dance around in a circle ourselves, which one of the women said had never happened before. No videos of that because I was participating, but I think this is proof of what police--and overseas--support can do. When the chair-thrower was arrested I think it really changed the dynamics. The haredim no longer had the upper hand, and there were consequences to their hatred. They were in the position that we were in back in December, and even more so probably November. And why were the police guarding us? I think that has something to do with overseas--particularly North American--support for Women of the Wall. I mean, politics make my head spin, but when 29 Canadian rabbis send a letter to their Israeli ambassador supporting Women of the Wall and there is enough American support that the ambassador to the United States made a statement about the issue, that's gotta mean something, right? If nothing else, it'd probably make Israel look pretty bad if/when something bad happened to the Women of the Wall while they were davening, assuming they were following the law (not reading from the Torah and not wearing talitot). Why else would the police go from arresting Nofrat Frenkel to protecting us from the haredim, if not for international pressure?

I have to say, I will be perfectly happy if the Haredi men keep drowning us out by singing and dancing and reciting Hallel at us. These are all things that belong at the Kotel. Screaming insults and throwing chairs--those do not. What are the chances that they'll find this solution satisfactory, or that next month will be even slightly like this month? One thing I've learned over the past three months is that the reaction to our davening is unpredictable. Totally and completely unpredictable.

We went from our peaceful davening at the Kotel to an even more peaceful Torah reading with rotating Torah readers, including Devora, a fellow Rothberg student. Notice how you can hear the birds singing. Isn't that a nice end to it all?

Bigotry in Jerusalem

Lately, I've been feeling really sick of this city. I've already mentioned the anti-Arab bigotry that I saw on Rosh Hashanah and around Yom Kippur and at the soccer game, but I feel like I've been experiencing it a lot more recently--and not just bigotry against Arabs, but against anyone who's not Orthodox.

First, there was Masa's Security Issues Shabbaton on the last weekend of November. The weekend began with a Friday tour of the security barrier, run by the Israeli human rights organization B'tselem. We heard stories about families and villages cut arbitrarily in half and people who can't get past the checkpoints to receive medical treatment, and the absurdity of the situation hit me. I don't know much about the effects of the barrier--I am not an Israeli resident, but a representative from Stand With Us emphasized the effectiveness of the thing in stopping terrorist attacks--but couldn't they build the barrier around said villages, rather than straight through it? What security does splitting up families and communities provide?

And then there's the issue of Sheik Jarrah, where a Palestinian family was evicted from their home to be replaced by Jews (this over and above the houses that are being demolished), and the people who protest it keep getting arrested! Yaron, the youth coordinator of JOH, was one of those who got arrested the two weeks ago; he told us the story on Sunday, at which point he told me to be careful of what I do because they were deporting the non-Israelis who were arrested. (Whether that actually happened or not I don't know.) It's all really frustrating because really, there's nothing I can do. While others I know do go to said protests, I don't feel like I can ignore Yaron's warning--and even if I did go, what good would it do? Are these protests really doing anything?

Switch topics of a second to Orhodoxy in this city. I already posted about the protest I went to on the same weekend of the MASA thing. That occurred in the middle of a personal struggle of mine, in which I came out to my chevruta partner at JSSC and she freaked out. The following Sunday, the director of the women's learning program nearly kicked me out, telling me to "think seriously" about whether or not I wanted to be in the program, and lectured me about being a non-Orthodox convert and how she wishes the other movements of Judaism wouldn't call themselves Judaism because "Judaism has 613 commandments" and the other movements "are really different religions." The next week, someone else called me a "bad Ashkenazi" when I told her that my family's tradition is to follow the Sephardic rules for Pesach--because obviously, where my family's originally from matters much more than the customs of my family now. The same person compared my LGBT Jewish community at home to Sodom and Gomorrah, and none of the other (also Orthodox) people stood up for me. The head of the Hillel-Hecht Beit Midrash program "reserve[s] the right to talk to [me]" when I told him about what happened at JSSC and why--although he has since requested a copy of Rabbi Steve Greenberg's book.

And then there's Women of the Wall; the arrest of Nofrat Frankel which I have mentioned multiple times in this blog, and the abuse that we suffered last Friday. I am reminded of this every time I ride the 4א through Ge'ula and see the streets full of men who look exactly like those who were yelling at the Women of the Wall and women who look exactly like those who have insulted me for my identity. And I think, how can one live in this city. How can one take insults to oneself, and then look up and see all the other, much bigger bigotry going on around her? And when I mentioned it to one of our madrichim, his only response was, "What bigotry?" What bigotry, indeed. Have you lived here so long that you can no longer see it?

I know that America is not innocent of racism, but I still look forward to my upcoming month there. I need a breath of fresh air, or at least air filled with problems that I'm used to.

Protesting in the Holy City

Last night, I attended a protest in the center of Jerusalem. I'm rather surprised by the lack of media coverage of it; it seemed like a big deal, with thousands of people marching down King George and Ben Yehuda, culminating in one very full Kikar Tzion. Yet, somehow, it wasn't mentioned in either the Jerusalem Post or the English edition of Ha'aretz. (There is a Ha'aretz article here.) The best coverage I can find is from EuroNews. (Note that the guy holding the flag in the first frame is Andy Dubin, one of my former teachers from high school.)

After reading that article, I have to wonder--what were we actually protesting? The protest was billed as

“Taking back the city, by walking!”
Secular, religious and masorti Jews:
say put an end to attempts of haredi coercion
and unite to restore sanity, freedom
and mutual respect to the city!

which is entirely consistent with the newspaper articles. Yet, what is it specifically that we were protesting? According to EuroNews, we were protesting the Haredi protest of Intel, which I didn't even know about until now. According to Facebook and the Masorti movement, we were protesting the arrest of Nofrat Frenkel at the Kotel. I couldn't understand the speeches because they were in Hebrew, so I don't actually know what we were officially protesting. All I could really catch were a few phrases about Jerusalem belonging to everyone--which, of course, I fully agree with. I was told that the general message was "Why do we let a minority who doesn't even serve in the army control our capital?" but I have to take other people's word for that. It's gotta be true; why would they lie?

Anyway, I hope that we actually accomplished something with our march/rally/protest combination. I'm not particularly hopeful considering the lack of media coverage, but maybe we at least sparked something. Maybe. And with that, I leave you with some footage of the event itself, courtesy of my and Alexis's cameras. Mine's the one that sucks.

A bit of politics

I'm not so sure that I want to get into politics here, but I feel like it's necessary now. I have now been to/through three "settlements" in the West Bank: Me'or Modi'im, Chevron, and the random settlement that our tour guide for the Chevron trip was from (the "through" it the above sentence, as we drove through it on our way back to Jerusalem). I didn't even realize that Me'or Modi'im was beyond the green line until we were coming back and passed through the checkpoint--which, by the way, was nothing. I really don't understand it. If all of this land is Israel, why can't Jews form communities on land that is otherwise uninhabited, no matter where in Israel it is? Why can't Arabs? If Chevron is a part of Israel, why can't Israeli citizens who just happen to be Jews move there if there are houses and/or land for sale? I'm not looking to start a discussion on either side right now; I am just expressing some confusion. I hope to form my own opinions based on my time here before anyone tries to convince me of anything.

That said, this article bothers me. Take a look:

Two policeman and two Muslim worshippers were lightly injured in riots which erupted Sunday morning at the Temple Mount holy site in Jerusalem.

The incident began when a group of tourists entered the Temple Mount compound accompanied by a police force. At a certain stage, some 150 worshippers started gathering around them and calling out towards them.

Some of the worshippers began throwing stones at the group. The police force fired stun grenades in an attempt to gain control of the riot. Two police officers were lightly injured by stones and received medical treatment on the site. They were later evacuated to the Shaare Zedek and Hadassah Ein Kerem hospitals in the capital.

Two worshippers were lightly hurt by the grenades and were evacuated to the al-Maqasid Hospital in east Jerusalem. According to Palestinian sources, 13 people were hurt after inhaling tear gas. Adult worshippers attempted to calm things down, while the group of tourists was removed from the site.

Were the tourists really allowed on the Temple Mount? If not, why were they there? Why were they accompanied by police? What happened before the violence broke out?

And then there's this:

The defense establishment has declared a heightened state of alert across the country ahead of the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur. On Saturday evening, a closure was imposed on the West Bank until Monday at midnight. Residents will only be allowed to cross into Israel in humanitarian cases.....

Vehicles will not be allowed to pass from east Jerusalem to the western part of the city in order to minimize the friction between Jews and Arabs.

I do have to wonder what time this went into effect last night, since we passed through the checkpoint around 20:30 last night with no line, no hold-up. But what in the world? How is this okay? What's happened in the past that's necessitating this? Did anything happen, or is this another example of Israel not really being one land one country after all?