Large crowds gathered at the Kosel this morning for Rosh Chodesh tefillos as tensions flared once again over the activities of the Women of the Wall group, whose members reportedly smuggled a Sefer Torah into the plaza in violation of existing regulations.
According to witnesses, members of the Reform-affiliated activist group raised the Sefer Torah in celebration after successfully bringing it into the women’s section of the Kosel plaza.
At the same time, hundreds of seminary students arrived at the site following longstanding guidance issued years ago by Rav Aharon Leib Shteinman zt”l encouraging participation in counter-demonstrations opposing the activities of the group commonly referred to as “Women of the Wall.”
Large police, Border Police, and riot-control forces were deployed throughout the Kosel area in anticipation of confrontations between the sides.
Police officers reportedly clashed with demonstrators during the morning, and one chareidi girl was arrested and taken to a police station located at the site.
Meanwhile, hundreds of people participated Friday in a large Shacharis minyan held specifically in the southern section of the Kosel plaza, the area at the center of ongoing legal and political disputes regarding efforts to establish a permanent Reform prayer space there.
Participants brought a mechitzah and conducted a traditional tefillah as part of what organizers described as an effort to strengthen the Jewish and traditional character of the site.
Those who attended said the decision to hold the tefillah specifically in the southern plaza symbolized the broader struggle over the future character and sanctity of the Kosel.
Participants also explained that the choice of location was intended “to declare in a clear voice — the Kosel belongs to all the Jewish people, but its holiness is not ownerless.”
Someone should of grabbed that toy torah and wacked them all on the head with it.
I suggest compiling all of their names and writing a special Sefer Torah to read while they’re doing their thing every month and daven for all of them to do teshuva. As we say at Ne’ilah, Hashem doesn’t want the wicked to die, he wants them to do teshuva and live. (See Yechezkiel 18:32 and 33:11.) I suggest that in demonstrating against them carry signs: “Your neshomos are screaming out to us to daven to get them out of klipos they’ve fallen into”, as we say every morning, Elokai, neshomo sh’nasasa bi tehora he. And the Chazon Ish pointed out that even though Chazal say Hakol bidei Shamayim chutz mi’yiras Shamayim, that doesn’t mean that the person who needs Yiras Shamayim has to ask for it himself (or herself), just that someone in our world has to ask for it. That’s why Rebbe Meir’s prayers for the briyonim in his neighborhood were able to work (Berachos 10a).
The leader of this movement is an atheist.
All the women in this movement are either tragically misguided into following an atheist for religious guidance or they are also manipulative destructive liars like their leader.