Monday, August 9, 2010

An Update Regarding "Women of the Wall" ... Can We Take Your Picture Please?

Three weeks ago, I gave a sermon (posted here) regarding challenges happening in Israel with respect to progressive/liberal/reform Judaism.  Simply put, it seems that Jewish religious freedom doesn't really exist in Israel. 

A little more than three weeks ago, Anat Hoffman, the Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and a founding member of "Women of the Wall," was arrested for carrying a Torah near the Western Wall ... the charge was that she did something that was "religiously offensive" to others. 

Below is the information from a sheet I prepared with more background about Anat's arrest and the subsequent project to photograph 10,000 women/girls holding Torahs between now and Simchat Torah ... we started this past Friday night and have pictures of about 50 women so far ... and we are going to keep taking them!   Here is the information ... take a look and let me know what you think.   : )


Official Website of “Nashot HaKotel / Women of the Wall” …



http://womenofthewall.org.il/






Video Showing Anat Hoffman’s Arrest …


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAENxv3odjo&feature=player_embedded#!






Rabbi Leah Berkowitz’s Blog … With an Eyewitness Account of Anat Hoffman’s Arrest …


http://thisiswhatarabbilookslike.wordpress.com/






Blessing for Women to Read While Holding a Torah for this Purpose …

 .פתח ליבי בתורתך.  ברכו שעשני אישה

P’tach libi b’toratecha. Barchu she’asani isha.

Open my heart to your Torah. Blessed is the One who made me a woman.






Letter including the Petition from Women of the Wall to:


- Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister


- Rubi Rivlin, Speaker of the Knesset


- Tzipi Livni, Head of Kadima and leader of the opposition


- Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency


- Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites


can be found at: http://womenofthewall.org.il/take-a-stand ... here is the text:





 Shalom,

I am writing today to tell you that Women of the Wall are not alone. Our daughters and our rabbis, our mothers and our grandmothers, our cantors and our teachers hold the Torah, read from the Torah, and study the Torah every day. Hundreds of thousands of women and young girls embrace our Torah Scrolls while their prayers reverberate in our synagogues. We pray without disturbance, without fear. Our prayer is seen as normal and accepted. Only in Jerusalem do women pray with fear and only in Jerusalem are women treated as criminals for practicing Judaism.


On Rosh Hodesh Av 5770 we experienced unthinkable abuse by the very political and legal system that we, as Jews of the world, established to offer sanctuary and to initiate the renewal of modern Jewish life. How is it that as Jewish women, we are free in Berlin, in Rome, and in Chicago, while in Jerusalem it is illegal and profane for us to read from the Torah?


During the days and weeks between the 9th of Av and Simchat Torah we will be sending you pictures from our families, synagogues, and communities. You will see women read, study and embrace Torah Scrolls. On their faces will be joy; not the expression of horror captured by journalists as police took a woman holding a Torah into custody.


We ask you to open your eyes and see what is ordinary every place else in the world: women embracing Torah, reading from the Torah, rejoicing with the Torah and learning from the Torah. We ask that you see and be blind no more to the injustice of religious oppression.


- Your Signature Here.

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