(Haaretz) — “You don’t belong here,” said the man trying to shut the heavy wooden door in my face. “Get out.” I was standing in a little-known, indoor women’s section at the Western Wall, one that can be approached only through the outdoor men’s section. The space is clearly designated – in stone and glass…
(JTA) — Rabbi Daniel Alter expects some added fervency during daily prayer services at the Denver Academy of Torah in the days leading up to the Super Bowl. Alter, the academy’s head of school, recalls that when the Colorado Rockies faced the Boston Red Sox in the 2007 World Series, his students were more focused…
Women of the Wall is close to approving an agreement with the Israeli government to move the group’s monthly prayer service to a new egalitarian area. The report Monday in Haaretz was corroborated on the organization’s Facebook page. The agreement comes after months of negotiations between the organization and an Israeli government committee. In October,…
It’s probably because I’m male — and Haredi, or “ultra-Orthodox,” to boot — that, much as I try, I find it hard to relate to Jewish women who feel religiously unfulfilled unless they can lead services, read from the Torah or otherwise take up public roles in synagogue life. But there’s another reason, too: I…
Israel’s chief rabbis called on the public to say special prayers due to the lack of rain. Chief Rabbis Yitzhak Yosef and David Lau also called for a mass prayer at the Western Wall on Thursday . The rabbis ruled that the incredibly dry winter in Israel matches the definition under Jewish law of a…
(JTA) — The need for a firm barrier between church and state is as clear now for Susan Galloway as it was in grade school, when she was expected to sing carols at the Christmas show. Galloway grew up in McHenry, Ill., a town northwest of Chicago with few other Jews, and the carols sung…
(JTA) — The key dispute in the recent feud between Women of the Wall and some of the group’s founders is whether Robinson’s Arch — an area adjacent to the Kotel plaza meant for egalitarian prayer — counts as the Western Wall. Anat Hoffman and most of the group’s board has said they’re willing, in…
When the U.S. Supreme Court talks about religion, all hell breaks loose. A dispute over an upstate New York town’s prayer before council meetings produced an unusually testy oral-argument session on Wednesday that recalled the decades of difficulty Supreme Court justices have had drawing the line between church and state. Court decisions involving freedom of…
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