Women of The Wall - Orthodox Opposition

Orthodox Opposition

The thrust of the Haredi and other Orthodox opposition to Women of the Wall praying as a group is their belief that Women of the Wall is motivated by a desire to make a political statement against traditional Judaism rather than a sincere desire to pray. The influential Posek HaGaon Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ruled that women's prayer groups are permissible only when their motivations are deemed by the rabbis to be "sincere" and not influenced by feminism. Some haredi opponents have claimed that the group's assembly is not in accordance with Orthodox halakha. According to Haredi Rabbi Avi Shafran, the group has also disobeyed the instructions of the Rabbi in charge of the Wall and of the Israeli Rabbinate.

In "Trojan Horse at the Western Wall," an article first published in 2000, Rabbi Shafran wrote as follows:

The air of belligerence, too, that permeates the group’s directives to its followers bespeaks something considerably less rarefied than spiritual yearning. "Remember why you are doing this," writes Jesse Bonn, an Israeli member of the group offering "inspirational words" – " Jewish women's voices, whether in polemics or prayer, will not be silenced..."

Even the language employed by the group’s spokesman is the language of war: "The struggle still lies before us... Armed with this legal declaration of our rights, we will be able to continue the fight...", writes Danielle Bernstein, an Orthodox Jew, and Phyllis Chesler, a director of the women’s group’s board of directors.

In addition to opposition to group prayer, the haredi community also opposes the women's singing in the presence of men, reading from the Torah, and donning tallit and tefillin, ritual garments and objects traditionally associated with men.

In May 2013, a group of influential Religious Zionist rabbis issued a letter calling on public figures "not to let a small group offend the thousands of worshippers arriving to pray at this sacred place on a regular basis." They went on to state that "there are those who have been trying in recent years to change the present situation, offending many and tainting the special atmosphere of holiness of this sacred place."