I Stand with Women of the Wall

"Women of the Wall are not alone.  Our daughters and our rabbis, our mothers and  our grandmothers, our cantors and our teachers hold the Torah, read from the  Torah, and study the Torah every day. Hundreds of thousands of women and young girls embrace our Torah Scrolls  while their prayers reverberate in our synagogues.  We pray without disturbance, without fear.  Our prayer is seen as normal and accepted. Only in Jerusalem do women pray with fear and only in Jerusalem are women treated as criminals for practicing Judaism.

On Rosh Hodesh  Av 5770 we experienced unthinkable abuse by the very political and legal system  that we, as Jews of the world, established to offer sanctuary and to initiate  the renewal of modern Jewish life. How is it that as Jewish women, we are free in Berlin, in Rome, and in Chicago, while in Jerusalem it is illegal and profane for us to read from the Torah?

During the days  and weeks between the 9th of Av and Simchat Torah we will be sending  you pictures from our families, synagogues, and communities. You will see women read, study and embrace Torah Scrolls.  On their faces will be joy; not the  expression of horror captured by journalists as police took a woman holding a Torah into custody.

We ask you to  open your eyes and see what is ordinary every place else in the world: women  embracing Torah, reading from the Torah, rejoicing with the Torah and learning  from the Torah. We ask that you see and be blind no more to the injustice of religious oppression."

Sent To:

Binyamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Minister

Rubi Rivlin, Speaker of the Knesset

Tzipi Livni, Head of Kadima and leader of the opposition

Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Executive of the Jewish Agency

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz,  Rabbi of the Western Wall and Holy Sites