OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israeli police with metal barriers and human chains on Friday held back hundreds of ultra-Orthodox men and women trying to prevent a liberal Jewish women's group from praying at a key site, the first time police have come down on the side of the women and not the protesters. The switch followed a court order backing the right of the women to pray at the Western Wall in the Old City with practices Orthodox Jews insist are the role of men alone. The “Women of the Wall” group has been holding monthly prayer services on the first day of the Hebrew month at the Western Wall in Jerusalem for more than two decades, wearing prayer shawls and performing religious rituals reserved for men under Orthodox Judaism. Accused by ultra-Orthodox leaders of violating “local custom” at the site, many members have been arrested. On Friday the tables were turned because of the court ruling. Police protected the women and arrested three ultra-Orthodox men for disorderly conduct, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. It's a turning point for the group. Along with the arrests, the women have faced heckling and legal battles in a struggle to attain what they say is their right: to worship at the wall as men do. Then last month a Jerusalem court instructed police to stop detaining the women. “It's a historic moment,” said Shira Pruce, a spokeswoman for Women of the Wall. “The police did an amazing job protecting women to pray freely at the Western Wall. This is justice.” The plaza just in front of Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical Jewish Temples, is marked off into two distinct sections, one for men and the other for women, where they pray separately. Up to now, women have had to abide by the Orthodox strictures of prayer. Under Orthodox Jewish practice, only men may wear prayer shawls and skullcaps, and most Orthodox Jews insist that only men should carry a Torah scroll. The more liberal Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism, marginal in Israel but the largest denominations in the United States, allow women to practice the same way as men do in Orthodox Judaism. Israel's ultra-Orthodox establishment opposes any inroads from these groups, fearing their customs and authority could be eroded. They have argued that visitors to the Western Wall, whose rabbi is ultra-Orthodox, must respect the local practices. Israeli media reported that before Friday's prayer service, some rabbis called on followers to flood the Western Wall in a bid to block the women from reaching the site. Israeli TV video showed a packed Western Wall plaza with police forming a ring around the women and others shoving back ultra-Orthodox men. Female police officers had aligned in a human chain around young women peering out at the Women of the Wall. Pruce said police escorted the women out of the area and boarded them on buses, which were then pelted with stones as they left the Old City. — AP
