The Reason that my Tallit Belongs at the Kotel

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Gabby Goodman

Reflections on Rosh Hodesh Sivan with Women of the Wall, 5773 – 2013

Throughout the year I have studied here in Jerusalem, I have learned that the Wall has its own identity crisis. It is part of a larger structure that was built and carried, lost, built again and then destroyed, and built again, and built over again and destroyed again. There are more stages in between of deeper and deeper details. The figurative symbol of complete purity, it was more often an embodiment of utter corruption. The man who inspired the design of the particular Wall before which we stand today was a gifted, paranoid maniac, maddened by grief and riches and conflicting loyalties. The Temple itself, and the Wall it became, changed owners and took on ideologies of shocking variance over the centuries. And yet here it still stands, a testament to physical stability, containing all of its tumultuous history behind the serenity of its stones.

On the first Shabbat I was in Jerusalem, I walked with a group of very new friends into the Old City for the first time. I knew nothing about it except that it was the last of the Temple, a remnant of a Judaism from long ago, one with which I had trouble relating, but that it was “supposed to”, maybe, inspire a surge of feeling within me. Perhaps a feeling of closeness to the Divine? Perhaps an intense unification with the Jewish people? Perhaps bafflement or even, perhaps nothing? I was curious, and determined not to judge whatever feeling arose. Continue reading →

Rosh Chodesh Sivan 5773 at the Kotel

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Laurie Franklin

I went to the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh Sivan expecting to pray, and I did. I was surprised that I could focus on prayer in the volatile atmosphere; the hullabaloo made me concentrate even harder than usual. “Ozi v’zimrat Yah” never had greater meaning for me than it did on Friday morning as I stood with several hundred women and men on the Kotel plaza, praying for the welfare of the world in the new month of Sivan.

I came to welcome the month and to celebrate the new court ruling that allows women to pray in tallitot and tefillin at the wall. What a wonderful reason to rejoice: I could sing, dance, wear a tallit, and not fear arrest! Even though the government is discussing the Sharansky plan, I am convinced that the Women of the Wall need to continue to pray as they have for the last 25 years until a viable long-term plan is realized. Those who oppose my presence as a praying woman in a tallit do so because Continue reading →

Rosh Chodesh Sivan at the Kotel

Posted on May 12, 2013 by Andrea Wiese

From my blog:

Watch the actual video: here.

Friday morning was a blur. A scary blur. I didn’t wake up until 6:24 AM when my roommate screamed, “WIESE.” And I jumped out of bed, how could this happen, on a day that was so important to me? Never mind…we jumped in a taxi and I ran down to the women’s section with my bag. I couldn’t even get to the regular spot because there was a sea of light blue shirts of seminary girls from all over Israel. I quickly realized that they had been bussed in for the exact opposite reason I was there. I ran into my dear friend, and later saviour, Melissa. She was also lost. We didn’t know where “Women of the Wall” (WOW) was praying because there wasn’t space where they normally gather. (Smart thinking ultra-orthodox girls…if there isn’t space, maybe they can’t pray at the Kotel. Makes sense.) We went down together into the sea of blue, maybe they were there somewhere. They weren’t. But it was time to daven, so Melissa started pezukei dezimra (the “warm up” blessings, as I like to call them,) while I started to put on my tefillin. It was worse than the paparazzi that normally come to women of the wall. The girls thought they were seeing an alien or the devil…it was true what their rabbi told them, there are women who put on tefillin! They started taking pictures of my and then scuttled away, they didn’t want to be too close, maybe I could contaminate them. Many were already tisking at the action. But then, I pulled out my tallit (I know I should put on my tallit first and then tefillin, but there isn’t a lot of space and it’s difficult, so I reverse the order,) it was like poison. The girls backed away like if touching it would burn them, or something worse. They started making this hissing noise, I have never heard such a frightening/bizarre noise in my life. No one wanted to talk to me, it was too shocking to them. And I was there alone with my tallit and tefillin. I still didn’t know where the other women were. Melissa had finished pezukei dezimra and she looked at me, we knew we had to get out of there. It wasn’t safe. I was already flustered. Melissa, calm and cool, Continue reading →

[PCJE Dvar Torah] ‘Sacrificing Our Time’ by Aliza Geller

Posted on April 26, 2013 by Aliza Geller

Devar Torah Workshop, Parashat Emor

Over the past couple of weeks, students in their first year of the Pardes Center for Jewish Educators have been participating in a Devar Torah workshop with DLK (Rabbi David Levin-Kruss). This is the Devar Torah I wrote to be presented at the workshop yesterday, for Parashat Emor. Please keep in mind that this was written for middle school students and it is written to be read aloud. Emor has a many parts and it was hard to decide what to focus on, especially since I needed to find something Continue reading →

Toxic Davening

Posted on April 11, 2013 by Shoshana Rosen

From my blog:

When you are praying the words “Shema Yisrael”, “Listen Israel”, but instead you hear the sound of people yelling at you.

When there are more photographers and journalists than people praying.

After months of hesitation and apprehension I visit the kotel for Rosh Chodesh. I go to finally see what it is like to be a part of Women of the Wall, an organization that some of my friends have been very active in all year. I have come up with every excuse in the book to not go: “I’m too tired, I really need to sleep”, or “I don’t want to get arrested for being there when I don’t even know how I feel about it”. But after realizing I have successfully not gone for 9 months, and I only have 1 or 2 more opportunities before I leave Israel this time, I pushed my self to wake up and go.

I was waiting on line with this huge group of Argentinian Jews who, from overhearing their conversation, had just come from Poland. And they looked like it, exhausted, drained, and happy to be in Eretz Yisrael. With the look in their eyes, like they know the last week of their lives changed them forever, even if some haven’t realized it yet. Continue reading →

Singing and Kol Shofar at Women of the Wall

Posted on March 13, 2013 by Annie Matan Gilbert

Singing and dancing at the Kotel

This Rosh Hodesh was my second time attending Rosh Hodesh davenning at WoW. Last month, I was glad to check it out and feel like I was part of something important but between the cameras and security, I struggled to feel like I was davenning.

This Rosh Hodesh, two amazing things happened. 1) I got to sing shacharit and hallel liturgy with gusto, led by Pardes alumna Lauren Henderson and Joanna Selznick Dulkin. I realized that for me, singing was important medicine in healing my relationship with the Kotel. From my very first visit, when I was 16, I have longed to sing praises to God at the Kotel. Singing is how I express myself in prayer most openly. Raising my voice in harmony with the Women of the Wall, especially singing Min HaMetzar, I felt so present with the narrowness of our situation and my prayers felt so real.

All of this is not to say that our davenning went without incident. While no one was arrested, thank God, there were Haredi women screaming at us that our prayers were an insult to God and calling us names. Some of them planted themselves in front of our group and chanted tehillim at the top of their voices, in an effort to drown us out. And when they were not chanting their prayers, they were shushing ours.

And on the men’s side… I was astounded to hear someone blowing a shofar to drown out our Shma. The thought occurred to me that it must be a sin to try to block someone’s prayers from reaching God. (I don’t believe one can succeed at such a thing.) I was upset and appalled at the ingenuity of the method. But then I got to thinking about the shofar and had my second amazing moment.

2) Kol shofar – the voice of the shofar. I remembered a teaching that on the yamim noraim, the shofar is God’s voice crying into our world. And suddenly, I recalled these shofar blasts on Rosh Hodesh not as an interruption in our prayer, but as God’s voice, either praying along with us or crying out with us.

I am still marveling at the healing of both of these experiences.

I realized Monday night that I only have a few more months here when I will have the luxury of showing up at the Kotel, wearing my kippa and tallit, singing my praise in blessing and protest. I made a commitment to myself that night that even though it makes for a really early morning for me (and I am not a morning person) I need to get up and show up to support this cause. And then, I showed up and got to sing and struggle. And now, I find myself looking forward to next month’s gathering with joy that even overshadows the sense of commitment and duty. Who knows what blessings will find me in Iyyar?

[Alumni Guest Post] Rosh Chodesh Adar! by Yishai Paquin

Posted on February 15, 2013 by admin

Yishai Paquin (Year '11-'12) is an avid photographer.
Here he shares a spiritual insight that he gained 
through photography:

Sometimes reminders come from unsuspected places. I was learning how to edit photos today when my instructor mentioned that dark layers are for light and light layers are for dark. It is the same basics for printing in a dark room also. Then it hit me! This is what I have been looking for in my photography, a spiritual push! It was not intended to be anything religious but I saw that in darkness there is light and in light there is darkness. Also in darkness a little bit of light will be seen, the great hope! So I have found a link between my spirituality and my photography. May it be the Almighty’s will that it will all work out with uplifting quality!

Sigh Here:

And a Poem for the Month of Adar:

Elevate the joy of Being!
Eternal connection of Life,
Elevating the mundane; what is mundane?

To the Life-Giver,
The Holy of Holies!
This Spark I carry!

Human I am meek yet mighty,
Haman dwells close by,
He too will be transformed.

A flicker of hope,
Amelek and a heart of flames,
Afire, adrift, ashore, AMEN!

Rosh Hodesh Adar at the Kotel

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Andrea Wiese

From my blog:

We went to the Kotel (Western Wall) to pray this morning for Rosh Hodesh Adar. It started last night organizing taxis for everyone from Pardes who wanted to go. This morning, I woke up at 5:30…I made the decision to wrap my arm tefillin and wear my coat over it. I wrapped it until my wrist, so under my coat it couldn’t be seen going through security. I put my Rosh (head) tefillin in my inside jacket pocket.

I met three other people from Pardes at 6:30am to get a taxi to the Kotel. We waited in line at security. They took my tallit and wouldn’t let me enter with it. They also took my empty tefillin bag. They didn’t know that it was already on my body. Honestly, I didn’t want them for protesting. I lay tefillin every morning, and it’s difficult for me to daven shacharit (the morning prayers) without tefillin now. There is a connection that comes with the tefillin. There is also a connection with the tallit, but as I told the reporters after they took my tallit, I want to pray at the Kotel, that’s why I came, so I’m willing to give up my tallit to be able to pray there on Rosh Hodesh. Continue reading →

[PCJE Dvar Torah] Laura Marder – Parshat Bo

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Laura Marder

In Parshat Bo we are given the ﬁrst Mitzvah from G-d. The mitzvah of being aware and sanctifying time with Rosh Chodesh.

“This month shall be to you the head of the months;
to you it shall be the first of the months of the year”.

Bo 11:2

While reading BO I tried to think about if I was a slave and generations before me were also slaves, how would I react to this mitzvah? It is a foreign concept for a slave to want to sanctify time. Time is not a concept that slaves are aware of or have any power over. It is scary to think of the responsibility in having to plan your time wisely all of a sudden. Then I thought, G-d like a good parental ﬁgure, had the Jews play an active role in their change, so they felt the personal responsibility to keep it up. They had to take an active role in making their new schedule as a free people. The Jews are given this command and then given the physical task of the pascal lamb. Continue reading →

Women of the Wall Up Close

Posted on December 18, 2012 by Aliza Geller

Originally posted on my blog:

Hanging in the rearview mirror of my cabdriver on the way to the Kotel.
It says, אין לי ארץ אחרת which means, I have no other country.

I need to start by saying that I love Israel, I am a zionist and I also believe in egalitarian Judaism. I am still able to love Israel, even though there are a number of problems related to how much sway the religious right has with the Government of Israel in general, and the Kotel in particular.

Some where along the way, the Kotel went from being one of the symbols of Judaism to being a synagogue policed by Haredim. People who go to the Kotel are told how to dress, what ritual objects they are allowed to bring, how they are allowed to pray. The bottom line is that Haredim refuse to recognize that there are other ways to be Jewish. This is something that needs to change, especially if Continue reading →

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