Tel-Chai Nation

As though what happened at the Western Wall wasn't bad enough, now the apartment of a member of Women of the Wall has been vandalized with slurs and death threat graffiti:

Vandals sprayed offensive and threatening slogans at the entrance to the south Jerusalem home of Peggy Cidor, a journalist and a member of the Woman of the Wall organization, which campaigns for egalitarian women’s prayer at the Western Wall.

A neighbor called the police after discovering the graffiti on Monday morning, spray painted in the stairwell leading to Cidor’s apartment.

Slogans declared “Women of the Wall are villains,” “Jerusalem is holy,” and, in a play on Cidor’s name when written in Hebrew, that “Peggy has passed her expiration date.” On Cidor’s door, the vandals scrawled “Torah tag,” a reference to “price tag” vandalism attacks, perpetrated by extremist settlers and their allies against Palestinian and Israeli Arabs. Another scrawl warned that Cidor was only the first, and that more attacks would follow.

About those "price tag" vandalism attacks: it's not clear if they actually were carried out by "settlers" though if they were, they only do harm to the legitimacy of Jewish residents of Judea/Samaria.

Cidor told The Times of Israel that she would not be deterred by the attack and that any changes to her lifestyle are “out of the question.”

“I’m not afraid,” she said. “It takes more than that to scare me. I’m just pissed off.” [...]

“The problem is not who did this,” she said. “It is whether the rabbis will understand that this isn’t the way to do it.”

Some of the rabbis she speaks of, like Shmuel Rabinowitz, have condemned the attack. But it's too little, too late; they could have avoided giving so much attention to WoW and ensured they would remain a mere blip on the radar. But nooooooooo, they just had to make such a ruckus.

On that note, the Jerusalem Post received correspondence, some pretty negative towards the Haredi moonbats (one letter was also quoted in the NJ Jewish News), and one of the writers who's a rabbi said:

I would humbly recommend silence for both sides. As the haredim realized in their recent exchange with Finance Minister Yair Lapid, sometimes silence is worthwhile.

The Women of the Wall would probably be long-forgotten had they been ignored. Their behavior clearly shows their interest in publicity. They should not be given free publicity.

There were also statements by the leadership of the Rabbinical Assembly in condemnation of the Orthodox position. I would suggest to them that first they deal with the alarming rates of intermarriage. A bit of silence and humility would surely do them no harm.

That's something every Haredi would do well to ponder. If they'd just turn their attention away and not act like egalitarians are all martians from outer space, they'd be solving the problem the real way. Now, they can only blame themselves for giving WoW all the attention they didn't need, and tarnishing their public image more than need be.

Labels: haredi corruption, Israel, Jerusalem, Judaism, misogyny, Moonbattery