History
Women of the Wall was founded in December 1988 during the first International Jewish Feminist Conference in Jerusalem. A group of approximately one hundred attendees praying in the women's section of the wall were cursed and physically assaulted by ultra-Orthodox Jews at the site. When the conference ended, a group of Jerusalem women continued to meet at the Kotel and formed Women of the Wall to assert their right to pray there without hindrance.
Women of the Wall have been attacked both physically and verbally by Haredi men and women. As a result, Women of the Wall has fought a legal battle asserting a right to conduct organized prayer at the Kotel and challenging government and private intervention in its efforts.
The struggle has led to two Israeli Supreme Court decisions and a series of debates in the Knesset. In its first decision, on May 22, 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that it is legal for Women of the Wall to hold prayer groups and read Torah in the women's section of the main Kotel plaza undisturbed. Four days later, Haredi political parties including Shas introduced several bills to overturn the decision, including a bill that would have made it a criminal offense for women to pray in non-traditional ways at the Western Wall, punishable by up to seven years in prison. Although the bill did not pass, the Israeli Supreme Court reconsidered its earlier decision. On April 6, 2003, the Court reversed itself and upheld, 5-4, the Israeli government's ban prohibiting the organization from reading Torah or wearing tallit or tefillin at the main public area at the Wall, on the grounds that such continued meetings represented a threat to public safety and order. The Court required the government to provide an alternate site, Robinson's Arch. Plans to construct a small prayer site at Robinson's Arch were unveiled in October 2003. WOW leader Anat Hoffman reacted harshly to the plan. "Now we're going to be praying at an archeological site, at an alternative site for the Jews of a lesser degree." The site was inaugurated in 2004.
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