Religious Freedom in Judaism

by Leah Bohbot,     11^th grade,       Chicago

It’s written in the Tanakh that Jews are meant to spend the month of Adar, Adar II in Jewish leap years, full of joy and celebration. During Rosh Chodesh, the beginning of the month, the Jewish organization Women of the Wall goes to the Kotel to pray and sing and dance and overall bring in the new month with joy. The organization was started by orthodox women hoping to have access to Torah and prayer as men do in the men’s section. It’s believed that it’s not kosher to hear a women sing and the people of the Women of the Wall are often called satanists and other negative names. However, this Rosh Chodesh was the most dramatic in the history of WOW. For weeks before, countless ads were put out in Israeli papers calling for mostly Chasidic and ultra-orthodox Jews to converge on the women praying and stop it.

This past Friday morning the students of Heller High went to the Western Wall to join WOW for what was not only the beginning of the most joyous month in the Jewish calendar, but also their 30th anniversary. We woke up around 5 am to attempt to get a spot at the Western Wall and join in our respective sections. When we arrived we were rushed up to an observation deck above the plaza where our principal, Rabbi Loren Sykes, stood to talk to us.

Despite the strong desire of many to join downstairs, we were told it simply wouldn’t be possible. As we looked down, there were orthodox jews around us as well. Not knowing what they could be thinking, some were worried, others intrigued. Rabbi Sykes and his daughter Mira had been there earlier and were immediately separated, he tried to protect women being attacked for their praying and she was called terrible names and was kept from getting close to one of the holiest sites in our religion. After speaking to the group about their experiences and the decision to not allow us to go down and praying together, my friend and I spoke to Mira more in depth about the traumatic event she had just gone through.

The Haredi men and women who disagreed with reform and conservative Jewish ideas of prayer had decided to push and stop people from expressing their religion. As we spoke with Mira, we could hear the pain behind her words and we felt it too. Despite being far above the crowd, the hatred and sadness went through us like waves. My friends and I held each other, crying, because of the hopelessness we felt. The screaming and shoving felt unreasonable, like Sinat Chinam, senseless hatred. But then Mira continued, she told us that while this hurt, Judaism and the Jewish people always becomes happy and just again, that we should keep this in mind but not to turn away, to instead continue to move forward. I ended up speaking to an older woman who had lived in Israel her whole life. She told us about her life and how there had been a shift in Israeli Judaism. Her last words to us before she left were that we needed to come back to Israel, words that promised we would come back to a better Israel, the promised land is coming.