Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Women’s Western Wall Prayer Session Attacked by Ultra-Orthodox Protesters

A women’s prayer service at the Western Wall was disturbed by protesting haredi Orthodox men and women.

The Original Women of the Wall group held morning services on Monday using a small Torah scroll that they smuggled in for the service. The more than 20 women were wearing prayer shawls and phylacteries.

According to a statement issued by the group, a breakaway from the Women of the Wall, the prayers were “brutally disturbed” by several haredi Orthodox men and women.

“Over twenty women participated in this morning’s prayer as the group and other worshippers prayed uneventfully at the Kotel until a number of haredi women began screaming and attempting to push into the group, assaulting members of the group by violent shoving and grabbing arms. Shouting and cursing, the attackers did not relent their assault until police arrived to protect the women’s prayer group,” according to the statement.

The police removed the protesters and remained in the area until the prayer service ended.

The Original Women of the Wall reject the recent compromise for an egalitarian prayer plaza, and have said they will not leave the women’s section of the Western Wall once it is ready. It has begun to have services at the Western Wall on days other than Rosh Chodesh, as the Women of the Wall traditionally has done for more than 25 years.

A 2013 Supreme Court ruling acknowledged the women’s right to pray at the Western Wall according to their beliefs, claiming it does not violate what has come to be known as “local custom.”

Regulations at the site set by the office have allowed women to wear prayer shawls and kippahs, but prevented them from using a Torah scroll in their section.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.