On December 1, 1988 a group of woman went to an old wall located in ancient Jerusalem. They wanted to pray wearing certain clothes with certain books. This was daring. People are killed for such things. The woman return each month, braving stares, insults, lawsuits, threats, or actual violence from the Jewish superstitious. Their goal? They want the same rights to the same beliefs held by the Jewish men with one important change: they want woman to also hold these important rights.
"As Women of the Wall, our central mission is to achieve the social and legal recognition of our right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray, and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Western Wall."
http://womenofthewall.org.il/
Grandpa Church is a bit eccentric. More below the orange carbuncle.
Who controls things?
Grandpa Church has an extensive set of rules detailing how men and women should live. The very zealous Jews claim God told them what to eat, what to wear, and numerous rules on how to live. It is a patriarch system. Male dominated. Men wrote the rules. Only men get to be Priests. Only men get to vote. At least under the written rules.
You see, there is a long held tradition that the written Grandpa Church rules were never widely used even among the Jews. And, among Jews, there is quite a bit of divergence as to how the laws should read and how Jews should live; the Gospels for example were written about 100 AD lumped Jews into three basic groups. Jews are famous for intelligent opinionated stubbornness: one problem, three Jews, seven solutions, all correct.
The people identifying themselves as the 12 Jewish Tribes seem to have coalesced around 1000 BC. They claimed to be the Chosen of an almighty GOD; they built a big temple. The Temple first fell around 500 BC and a large group of Jews were packed off to Iraq. Around 300 BC Cyrus the Great sent the Jews back to their homeland. The Temple was rebuilt and sacked again around 60 AD by the Romans. They took so much gold to Rome that gold prices plummeted and this in turn plunged the entire Roman empire into recession.
After the Roman empire fell apart around 500 AD, there was a Jewish state for awhile but the Temple was not rebuilt. The early Muslims, Arabs from the nearby deserts, conquered the Jewish states and sacked the Temple a third time. The Muslims built their own temples atop the ruins of the Jewish Temple. After these additions, for more than a thousand years, one can only access the Temple at a small portion of its Western Wall.
Around 1947, a fifty year effort financed and planned by Secular Jews succeeded in creating a Jewish state. Strangely, this was protested by the very religious Jews. You see, the secular state creation did not accord with the Biblical prophesies. Additionally, the secular Jews declines to place the super religious in charge, opting instead for the Protestant Dutch inspired rules for individual rights and requiring religious tolerance.
In the 1960's, the Jewish state used force to seize the Western Wall from Arab control. Since then, very religious Jews, called Orthodox or ultra Orthodox, pray there each day. Very valuable space. People want it. Complicated negotiations ensued; resolution was reached; however, every few months, weeks or years there is some angry squabble between Jews and Arabs over the Temple Mount.
But what about the woman? In accord with the 2500 year old rules of Grandpa Church, the Orthodox barred them from the Western Wall.
Woman may be on average 20% smaller than their male counterparts but one should never consider them meek. On December 1, 1988, around seventy Jewish women decide to protest the male domination of Orthodox prayer. They attempted to pray at the Western Wall and did so with a Torah scroll and wearing Jewish garments, tallitot or tefillin. These, it should be noted, were Orthodox customs; the protesters are usually, often, Orthodox woman.
http://images.dailykos.com/...
The Orthodox men responded with verbal and physical assaults.
The woman resolved to return every thirty days, and have done so for almost twenty years. The come on the Rosh Hodesh (new moon observance).
The secular authorities were called. Arrests. Lawsuits. Accusations. Counter accusations. The protests and counter protests continue to this day. Space, the control of vital space, is one of mankind's great intractable problems.
Meanwhile, the Jewish ultra-orthodox continue their attempts to control not only one part of an old temple located in an even more ancient city. They also seek to control public space.
Within Israel, and in neighborhoods throughout the United States, the zealots have demanded gender segregation on public buses, their own neighborhoods, airplanes, sidewalks, and hospitals. The zealots sit wherever they want. And the smaller women must move. How ape like.
How quickly the Orthodox warp reality to suit their delusions. The State of Israel was founded over their protests, formed by secular Jews, formed in defiance of the accepted Grandpa Church prophesies written in various books. It was only through the secular Jews that the orthodox Jews achieved the ability to pray at the Wall. Through secular money, secular blood, secular sacrifice. Rather than consider thanking those who helped them, they chose instead to be selfish hypocrites who think to deny the space to others. Still, always, no two living people can occupy exactly the same space: there are still regular protests at the Western Wall, not just between Arab and Jew but between male Jew and female Jew.
The superstitious can have their books and their old rules. But I see no reason for them to enforce these eccentric rules on anyone else. Let Grandpa Church remain eccentric but limit its right to make others the same way. At the Western Wall, as it should be in all public places, all fair and honest men stand with the women.