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At Jerusalem’s Western Wall: 'Not Only A Feminist Battle'

After winning in the judicial arena, “Women of the Wall” prepare for the political battle over the ability to pray freely by the Western Wall. 
Members of "Women of the Wall" group wear prayer shawls and one (C) wearing Tefillin, leather straps and boxes containing sacred parchments, that Orthodox law says only men should don, during a monthly prayer session at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City May 10, 2013. An Israeli police spokesman said on Friday that five ultra-Orthodox Jewish men were detained during a protest against the group. Last month the Jerusalem District Court said that the women should not be arrested for wearing prayer shawls
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“There is nothing Jewish about cursing, throwing stones and hurling bags of urine” — thus says new Knesset member Michal Rozin of the Meretz party. Together with about 300 women, all members of the “Women of the Wall” organization, Rozin participated last week [May 10] in the monthly Rosh Hodesh prayer service in the Western Wall square, for the new Jewish month of Sivan.

Rozin, together with her fellow fighters Tamar Zandberg (Meretz party) and Stav Shaffir (Labor party), emerged unscathed from the prayer service that was conducted with a police escort, but descended into a violent episode when thousands of ultra-Orthodox Jews tried to stop the women by hurling chairs, pouring liquids and throwing stones.

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