The Women of the Wall prayer service passed off relatively quietly Monday morning at the Western Wall despite a promise by hardline religious-Zionist activists to protest the group.
The group faced jeers and other mild forms of harassment by other women praying in the women’s section, as well as similar activity by small groups of Orthodox children harassing a group of men praying in solidarity with the Women of the Wall.
— Jeremy Sharon (@jeremysharon) August 9, 2021
— Jeremy Sharon (@jeremysharon) August 9, 2021
Public Security Minister Omer Bar Lev promised at the time to ensure that the Women of the Wall would not face such harassment again.
During the course of the Women of the Wall prayer service on Monday, women and young girls in the women’s section continually shouted at the group, especially when they sang.
And the Western Wall Heritage Foundation deployed a loudspeaker system for use in the male prayer service in the men’s section when the Women of the Wall service began, apparently in an effort to drown at their singing.
A small group of boy, both ultra-Orthodox and from the hardline religious-Zionist community, booed, jeered and insulted the small group of men praying behind the women’s section at the site in solidarity with the Women of the Wall group.
Rabbi Gilad Kariv at the Western Wall, Jerusalem, August 9, 2021. (photographer: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)תפילת ראש חודש אלול לצדן של נשות הכותל. אחרי קריעת הסידורים בר”ח תמוז וההתנהלות האלימה בתשעה באב, ישנה כאן הערכות מתאימה של המשטרה והסדרנים להגנה על המתפללות. באופן “מפתיע” בדיוק כשהתחילה תפילת נשות הכותל הודלקה מערכת ההגברה בעזרת הגברים בעוצמה מחרישת אזניים. חודש טוב. pic.twitter.com/gIoliQA7bV— גלעד קריב (@KarivGilad) August 9, 2021
Present among the men were Labor MK and Reform Rabbi Gilad Kariv as well as Deputy Chairman of the World Zionist Organization and former director of the Masorti Movement in Israel Yizhar Hess.
A group calling itself the Joint Committee for the Preservation of the Holiness of the Western Wall announced on Sunday that “thousands of worshippers” would go to the holy site on Monday to “protect the holiness of the Western Wall,” accompanied by Safed Chief Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu.
Ultimately however there were only small numbers of protestors against the Women of the Wall group.
Kariv noted that the prayer arrangements and security provisions for the Women of the Wall and the men’s service that accompanied them were better and more orderly than has been the case in previous months.
“If the [public security] minister and the police want it, then everything is under control and everything is quiet,” the MK told The Jerusalem Post.
Earlier he tweeted “After the ripping of siddurim (prayer books) on Rosh Chodesh Tamuz and the violent behavior seen on Tisha Be’av, this time the security and police forces were well preparing to protect the worshipers.”
Hess said that unlike many prayer services at the beginning of the new Hebrew month which are marred by severe protest, Monday’s was “almost uplifting,” adding that the voices of the Women of the Wall group singing could be heard from afar.
“There are however those who try to crassly bother them in the women’s section, but much less than in other months, and the public plaza where we [men] prayed was much quieter,” said Hess.
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