Jewish women challenge Western Wall prayer regulations, 1988-2017

On 1 December 1988, a group of women convened in Jerusalem for the first International Jewish Feminist Conference. On the last day of the conference, a group of 70 women went to pray at the holiest site for Jewish people, the Western Wall (Kotel). Women in the group read from the Torah, prayed out loud, and wore prayer shawls. These acts were all forbidden for women to do at the Western Wall by the Authority of the Western Wall and Holy Sites. The women’s prayer service was disrupted by ultra-Orthodox men and women who shouted and threatened the group. Ater enduring verbal and physical aggression from the group, the women finished their prayer and Torah reading. 

After that day, women continued to come back to pray at the Western Wall; they called themselves ‘Women of the Wall’ (WOW) and returned to hold a full prayer service once a month on ‘Rosh Chodesh.’ Ultra-Orthodox men again attacked the women during their prayer service on 9 December 1988. The men cursed at the women, spat on them, and attempted to take their Torah away. After this event, WOW representatives approached the police and the Kotel Administrator, Rabbi Yehuda Getz, to discuss how to ensure the safety of women who wished to pray at the Western Wall. The parties reached an agreement whereby women would be allowed to pray in the women’s section of the Western Wall as long as they do not have prayer shawls and Torah scrolls. Rabbi Getz believed that, this way, ultra-Orthodox men would not feel provoked into violence against the female worshipers. 

Alongside WOW, Jewish Women, who had taken part in the original women-led prayers in 1988, formed a North American partner organization called the International Committee for Women of the Wall (ICWOW).

When the next monthly prayer came, the violence perpetrated against WOW by ultra-orthodox worshipers only got worse. Although WOW members abided by the agreement and did not wear prayer shawls or bring Torah Scrolls, ultra-Orthodox men cursed at the women and threw chairs, bottles, and diapers at them. Police used tear gas to break up the ensuing riot. After this event, Rabbi Getz determined that WOW members were unwelcome at the Kotel as they “violated the public order.”

In May 1989, WOW petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel to be allowed to return to pray with prayer shawls, tefillin (phylacteries), and the Torah at the Western Wall. After hearing of the petition, the Minister of Religious Affairs issued an official order to “prohibit the conducting of any religious ceremony which is not according to the custom of the place and which offends the sensitivities of the worshiping public.” This meant that women were not allowed to wear the prayer shawls or read from the Torah at the Western Wall. During the period that followed, WOW continued to meet every month at the Kotel to pray without prayer shawls or reading from the Torah. 

In 1995, the Supreme Court arrived at its verdict on the WOW petition finding that the women’s form of prayer “violated the established custom of the place” and so was an illegal and punishable offense. The court ruled that women were allowed to pray at the women’s section of the wall but not while singing out loud, wearing the prayer shawl, or reading aloud from the Torah.

As recommended by the 1995 Supreme Court decision, the government set up a committee composed of directors general from multiple ministries to find a solution that addressed WOW’s grievances. No women were appointed to the commission. ICWOW launched a recruitment campaign to get organizations and individuals to lobby the commission. The commission missed multiple deadlines to issue its report, but after two years submitted its proposal. The commission recommended that the women pray at the “southeastern corner of the Old City wall” which is located outside the Old City and a considerable distance from the Western Wall Itself. ICWOW and WOW deemed the proposal unacceptable and petitioned the Supreme Court once again. 

The legal battle over the right of Jewish women to pray at the Western Wall as they please continued to play out in the Supreme Court for several years. Another government commission was appointed in the following years, however it failed to produce a proposal that WOW found acceptable. After this, ICWOW began a letter-writing campaign to the members of the new Neeman Commission. In 1998, the Neeman Commission proposed WOW pray at the archaeological site just south of the Kotel known as ‘Robinson’s Arch.’ WOW returned to the courts to fight for their right to pray at the Western Wall itself.

The next Supreme Court decision occurred in 2000 when the justices reversed previous decisions finding that “the various governmental committees [decisions] had all been contrary to the directions of the Court” since they did not grant the worshippers their right to pray in their own manner at the Wall. This reversal stemmed from the fact the government commissions had continually failed to produce a solution that accommodated the women who wanted to pray at the Kotel. The Court ordered the government to find an arrangement whereby women would have a place to pray at the Western Wall within six months.

After failing to implement the Court’s decision, the government asked the Court to hold yet another hearing on WOW’s petition. In this third hearing in 2003, the Court reversed its 2000 decision and ordered the government to prepare Robinson’s Arch as the designated prayer area for women who wished to pray aloud. It took another year until the area was ready to be used for prayer, but the area was limited in size and could only accommodate 50 worshippers. WOW members continued to pray every month in the women’s section of the Western Wall and would then move to the Robinson’s Arch section in order to read aloud from the Torah. 

In the years that followed, women who would come to pray at the Kotel were often threatened by police for wearing a prayer shawl or donning tefillin during prayer. In 2009, a female Israeli medical student who was praying at the Wall was arrested for wearing a prayer shawl. This was the first arrest of its kind in Israel’s history. In the following months, multiple members of WOW were arrested while praying at the Wall, and detained for hours or days at a time before being released. The police arrested some members, such as WOW chairperson Anat Hoffman, multiple times and asked them to accept restraining orders from the Western Wall. 

In March 2013, three female members of Knesset (Israel’s parliament) joined a WOW prayer service and were not arrested due to their parliamentary immunity. As the police continued to arrest WOW members, international media attention increased. ICWOW held a number of solidarity events throughout cities and college campuses in North America. Members of WOW continued to be arrested with Israeli police employing a ‘catch-and-release’ tactic (arresting worshipers and then releasing them the same day or the next) in the months that followed. 

In April 2013, Israel police arrested five WOW members on the grounds that they violated the law by ‘disturbing the peace.’ The judge threw the case out since there was no evidence of the women disturbing the peace. The government appealed the judge's decision; on appeal, the appellate court judge stated that not only was there no cause for charging the women, but that since WOW had been praying at the Wall in such a fashion for 25 years, they were protected under the Ministry of Religion regulation that stated that one must allow worshipers to pray according to the “custom of the place.” After the decision, hundreds of women wearing prayer shawls and tefillin (but still not allowed to bring in a Torah) went to pray at the Western Wall, protected by police from the group of ultra-Orthodox protesters.

In the years that have followed, WOW members continued to pray at the Kotel every month, sometimes being forced by the police to pray in a barricaded zone 150 meters away from the Wall itself, sometimes forced by the police to pray in the small prayer area away from the Kotel known as Robinson’s Arch. Almost always, ultra-Orthodox men and women subjected the women praying to verbal and physical violence. After 2013, male worshippers wishing to disrupt WOW prayers at the Wall amplified their own prayers through loudspeakers and blasted them at the women’s section in order to drown out the women’s prayers. Also, ultra-Orthodox seminaries bussed in seminary girls to enter the women’s section, to curse, to spit on, and to harass the women praying there.

In December 2013, WOW hosted a 25th anniversary prayer at the wall that attracted over 1,000 worshipers and supporters from both Israel and around the world. In October 2014, WOW members smuggled in a tiny Torah in order to perform the first ever bat mitzvah at the Western Wall. In July 2015, Western Wall security guards forbade a woman from entering the Kotel plaza because she was wearing a kippah (yamaka); Journalists widely reported the incident. WOW also embarked on an ad campaign throughout Jerusalem inviting families to have their daughter's bat mitzvah at the Kotel, hosted by WOW.

In 2016 an the Israeli government reached an agreement that after years of negotiations with various parties including WOW. The agreement called for the establishment of a third section at the Western Wall (in addition to the men’s and women’s sections that already existed) that would serve as an egalitarian section that would have its own independent governing body. A few months after the government reached the agreement, it was repealed after extensive pressure from the ultra-Orthodox members of government.

In January 2017, the Supreme Court ruled, on a petition submitted by a splinter group of WOW known as Original Women of the Wall (OWOW), that the state had 30 days to provide a ‘good reason’ why women shouldn’t be allowed to read from the Torah at the Western Wall. The Court’s ruling affirmed that women were to be allowed to wear the prayer shawl and the tefillin. This decision was based in part on the 2013 decision that recognized that WOW had influenced the local custom for decades. The Court further noted that the women deserved direct access to the Wall, something that they did not have while praying at the alternative Robinson’s Arch location. The ruling also stated that body searches of the women going to pray at the Wall were not within the scope of permitted security measures available to law enforcement at the Kotel. These body searches had been carried out usually in order to make sure women were not bringing in a Torah or tefillin. 

WOW founder and chairperson, Anat Hoffman, stated that the organization “achieved three of our four goals” since women were legally permitted to pray at the Western Wall wearing a prayer shawl, tefillin, and praying out loud.