Peggy Cidor concedes that she is not a radical feminist’s idea of a radical feminist.
All she seeks, for now at least, is to pray aloud at Judaism’s holiest site for a few hours a year. But a campaign by Cidor and dozens of other Jewish women for sexual equality at the Wailing Wall threatens to change the face of the Orthodox religious establishment in Israel.
Cidor is a member of Women of the Wall, an organisation launched 14 years ago to challenge centuries of tradition that permits only men to wear shawls and speak prayers from the Torah at the wall. But the organisation’s broader aim is to break the grip of men over Orthodox religious practices that, among other things, exclude women from becoming rabbis.
”We are radical feminists. Some of us are Orthodox in our religious beliefs, some of us are reformist. But we are all radical feminists,” said Cidor. ”Judaism has no dogmas; you can interpret it. We say the Torah has at least 70 interpretations, so why not a feminist one also that says we don’t need men to represent us before God?”
But Orthodox members of the Israeli parliament have now drafted a bill to amend an existing law that regulates behaviour at holy places, to include a prison sentence for women wearing a prayer shawl or reading aloud from the Torah near the Wailing Wall. They originally proposed a seven-year jail sentence, but this has now been changed to three years.
In their campaign to pray aloud at the wall the women say they are rejecting only convention because there is no prohibition in Jewish law. Until the police and courts waded in, about 30 women would gather in front of the wall once a month to pray for an hour.
”Some of the Orthodox men spat on us, beat us, threw rocks,” said Cidor, who was born into an Orthodox Jewish family but has since moved to the reformist wing of her faith.
”Many many women we meet there hush us when we start to pray out loud, because they believe it is forbidden by religious law. When we said the men couldn’t hear us from their part of the wall, one of the rabbis answered: ‘The wall hears you and it is offended’.”
Jonathan Rosenblum, director of the Orthodox organisation Am Echad and a vocal opponent of the Women of the Wall, agrees there is nothing written in Jewish law preventing the women from praying as they wish.
”Not everything they do there could you find an explicit prohibition for. That’s beside the point,” he said. ”At holy sites throughout the world, visitors show respect for the traditions of the place. Billy Graham, for instance, would not think of conducting a revival meeting in St Peter’s Square, nor would anyone demand the right to enter a mosque wearing shoes.”
The women’s struggle was dragged before the Israeli courts. In May 2000 the high court ruled that the women had the right to pray as they wished and told the government to organise it. The then Labour government appealed.
Last April the supreme court reaffirmed the women’s right to pray aloud at the wall, but said that because it upset the Orthodox community they should not be allowed to do so in front of the Wailing Wall. Instead, the court told the government to prepare a separate place for the women next to an archaeological site, away from the main wall.
”The court has rewarded the bullies,” said Cidor. ”They are offering us a place to pray in an archaeological site where rocks from the destruction of the temple by the Romans have been in place for 2 000 years. We want to be a part of the larger public. Why should we be hidden?”
While the immediate argument has focused on what happens in front of the Wailing Wall, the women’s real target is male domination of the Orthodox community.
”Women of the Wall is considered a very very radical group because we say we don’t need men to represent us before God and I can think of a lot of men who don’t like that idea,” said Cidor. ”We are a very serious threat to them and they understand it.”
Mr Rosenblum accuses the Women of the Wall of using the holy site to push a political agenda that he believes may ultimately split the Orthodox movement.
”They have introduced something from the outside -feminism – to try and change what has stood for thousands of years. If they continue with this I think women’s issues could well be the chink in the armour that leads to a dramatic split among those who consider themselves Orthodox,” he said. — Guardian Unlimited Â