3 - Women of the Wall

Summary

The feminist Women of the Wall (WOW) have been active in the Western Wall plaza since 1988. The group has struggled for women’s right to wear prayer shawls, pray, and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the women’s section of the Western Wall. Such practices disrupt the restrictions imposed by the ultra-Orthodox administration of the site, which has argued that the women violate Israeli laws and regulations regarding holy places that require visitors to respect the “local custom” of the site. WOW has also engaged in a legal battle. Its activists have been repeatedly arrested over the years and the group has filed petitions with the Israeli High Court of Justice to be granted permission for their practice. Their struggle has been over who is authorized to determine the “local custom” of the site. From a space shaped exclusively by ultra-Orthodox norms, WOW argues that it wants to make the Western Wall a place inclusive of all Jewish strands. Dismantling such intra-Jewish divisions, it constructs the site as a religious-nationalist symbol that should unite rather than divide Jews.