Tel-Chai Nation

I read about how the police again have been giving a bad image of themselves by relegating WOTW to the rear end of the Western Wall plaza, supposedly because they can't keep a lot of those Haredi hoodlums from antagonizing the group that way and because a lot of Haredi girls were crowding out the prayer section. But in the end, all they're doing is drawing a lot of needless attention to how they make a mountain out of a molehill, my my.

Phyllis Chesler finds this all disgusting, and says that even Haredi girls, almost like the boys, were doing some whistling in an attempt to drown out the singing of WOTW. She said that:

One WOW supporter, Dr. Ilana Rosansky, was blocked from approaching the Wall; like all WOW members, Dr. Rosansky was not even allowed into the women’s section but was kept hundreds of feet away penned in by the police, near the rest rooms. She asked a young haredi girl if she would do a “mitzvah,” a good deed, and please take her note, her prayer, on behalf of a dying friend, who was undergoing surgery that very day, and place it between the large stones. (Inserting such prayers is a common practice at the Wall. President Obama’s prayer was, unforgivably, leaked to the press).

The girl refused to do so and instead mocked and cursed Dr. Rosansky. What kind of ethics and compassion has she been taught? What does WOW’s commitment to Judaism and to humanity have to do with such commanded cruelty, ruthless conformity, and utter heartlessness?

I pity that girl when she stands before God and is asked about this single act of baseless hatred towards another Jew—and on the first day of the month in which Jews lost both their First and Second Temples due to the hatred of Jew against Jew.

And then the doctor clarified:

“My concern is that my own account was a bit softened. I didn’t ask only one girl. I asked a dozen girls and women – they all refused. Not only was I cursed, but these women also cursed the woman who was to undergo a double mastectomy that very day (and has, in fact, come through the surgery) for whom I wished to pray for refuah shleimah. That is not legitimate protest. That is Chilul haShem. And there is now a generation of Chareidi girls (Chesler’s “Mean Girls”) who think this is OK. No matter whether we agree or not about how women should pray (with or without tallit and t’fillin – singing aloud or silently) no amount of aveilut [sadness] (as is common in this season), can justify such behavior, as Chesler rightly points out.”

Whether or not the doc is Reform, this was unjustified and vulgar. While Haredi girls rarely stoop to the same kind of violence the men can in isolationist enclaves like those in Beit Shemesh, those raised under the kind of anti-Zionist bent the Satmar and Toldot Aharon have can be just as bigoted and filled with contempt for non-Haredis as their male counterparts. And the sad thing is that there's always a chance girl students from those sects were among the groups that went to the Kotel today, and I wouldn't be surprised if at least one had reacted rudely, to somebody they didn't even know personally. Some way to show politeness. The almost funny thing is how, even if Reform and the Satmar/Toldot Aharon both share anti-Zionist beliefs, they still dislike each other. Such irony.

Reading about that, no, I can't approve of this.

I thought of something after reading all this. It makes no difference what I think of the Reform movement, I wonder why groups like Women for the Wall would rather ask for a gathering at the Western Wall to counter Women of the Wall when they could be protesting a]the government's plan to release repulsive jihadists, b]Haredi violence in Beit Shemesh, c]exclusion of Jews from the Temple Mount, d]the horrifically biased marriage/divorce system, e]thugs who attack Haredi soldiers and even f]Haredi rabbis who employ vile language and make insulting, irrelevant references to race of sport players. If they could get plenty of girls from Haredi backgrounds to come to the Kotel, I'd think they'd also be able to encourage them to attend rallies for more vital causes as well. Yet all they're concerned is about this one mere group that's doing little more than praying in a way that supposedly makes them into Martians from outer space. I must be missing something here.

Now that I think of it, there is a legitimate argument there about why it's so easy to protest an alien form of Judaism but not the threat of jihad and sellouts of this country to the Religion of Peace. Protesting some of those dangers would be just as much a mitzvah as going to the Kotel, and could win over the public more easily. Besides, the time has come to cease giving WOTW all the attention they're going to give them. The Lord should decide their fate, not us.

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