Arrested For Wearing A Tallit While Female*
"Four women were taken into custody by the police on August 19 (Rosh Hodesh Elul) for wearing a tallit (ritual fringes) at the Western Wall, making Israel the only country in the world where wearing a tallit can be illegal, and the only country where there is a proposed law — submitted by ultra-Orthodox politicians — to make Jewish women’s religious practice punishable by a seven-year prison sentence."
Read the rest of Elana Sztokman's Jewish Daily Forward article here.
*For those (probably including me, in future years) who don't understand the reference, see " Driving While Black."
Read the rest of Elana Sztokman's Jewish Daily Forward article here.
*For those (probably including me, in future years) who don't understand the reference, see " Driving While Black."
posted by Shira Salamone at 12:59 PM
5 Comments:
Well there's two ways of understanding this.
1) Knowing that the UltraOrthodox at the Wall will freak out at the sight of a woman in a tallis, these women appear dressed in them anyway. They call it the exercise of their religious rights. Others call it provocation. It's the same argument that says that a woman should be able to walk down any city street at any time of night wearing whatever she wants without fear of being attacked but real life doesn't work out that way.
2) Who's easier to arrest? A handful of feminists or a thousand riotim Chareidim?
Garnel
Same woman applies to the old black lady sitting in the front of the bus, right? White folks are provoked, and there are fewer of her than of the white bigots.
Keep this up and I predict the day will come when the haredim rioters will be outnumbered by the secular rioters.
Also, in the case of the scantily clad woman, it isn't the police she is supposed to fear.
Larry, thanks for being sharp enough to post a much more intelligent response than I could think of.
Today I watched a man lein perfectly and another man keep his focus on the role of gabbai while a short-skirted female who had just had an Aliyah stood at the reading table.
If only the Haredim could find the mastery over his yetzer that perfectly normal Conservative and Reform Jewish men seem to possess, they wouldn't be demanding that the state safeguard them in their moral failures.
This goes to the question--whose Israel is it? We hit up our non-Orthodox brothers and sisters for money for Israel, send them to Birthright, and demand that they support pro-Zionist causes. However, we don't want them praying there?
For non-Orthodox women, wearing a tallit to pray is not a deliberate provocation, but a way of drawing closer to Hashem according to their own hashkafa. If we arrst them, then we are sending a message loud and clear--Israel is for the Orthodox. We don't want the non-Orthodox, but we demand that they keep the money coming. This will have a deleterious effect on non-Orthodox support for Zionsit causes. And if we could see past our own dalet amos, we would have enough sensitivity to realize that.
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