Echoes of a Shofar, 80 years later

Why do the Israeli government and Rabbi Rabinowitz, Head Rabbi of Holy Sites including the Kotel,  enforce the exactly same religious oppression at the Kotel in 2010 as the British Mandate did in 1930?

This past year, two members of Women of the Wall were arrested for wearing a Tallit and carrying a Torah. On Rosh Chodesh Elul, Women of the Wall were forbidden to blow the Shofar at the Kotel. Rabbi Rabinowitz would like the public to believe that Women of the Wall are extremists, zealots and provocateurs of conflict dividing the Jewish people. But in fact,  Jews have been forbidden to blow the Shofar, pray aloud and pray with the Torah at the Kotel since the 1930’s.

The YouTube video below, Echoes of a Shofar, has gotten over 94,000 views and has been widely forwarded on the web. In the video, men are portrayed as Jewish heroes for blowing the Shofar at the Kotel in a time of great oppression of Jewish religious freedoms in British Mandate Palestine. Over the past six months, Women of the Wall have suffered the same intimidation and we have been vilified and criminalized by Rabbi Rabinowitz and Jerusalem Police on his behalf, for doing exactly the same thing as these men: fighting for religious freedom at the Kotel.

Rabinowitz has seen to it that women are forbidden from praying aloud at the Kotel, women are forbidden to wear a Tallit, women are forbidden to pray with a Torah. No better than the British Mandate in Palestine, Rabinowitz made a new regulation that only he may approve who is allowed to bring a Torah to the Kotel- not all Jews are allowed to pray with their Sefer Torah at the Kotel.

Watch the video below and think of the many images of Anat Hoffman and Nofrat Frankel’s 2010 arrests at the Kotel for carrying a Torah and wearing a Tallit. Think of the hundreds of women that come to the Kotel to pray Hallel on Rosh Chodesh and are yelled at and cursed,  or have chairs thrown at them- all for praying aloud. This oppression is alive and well at the Kotel, and the women fighting the modern day fight are every bit the Jewish heroes that these men were then.

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