They Spit on the Sefer Torah

Recently I witnessed one of the most heinous acts a Jew could imagine.

With hatred and disgust in her eyes, a young Jewish woman looked directly at us and then spit on our Torah scroll. I have the pictures to prove it. I am still so horrified that I do not quite know how to process it.

It happened on the morning after I arrived in Israel, when I went to pray at the Kotel (Western Wall), as I do during all my annual trips to Israel.

Seeking Spiritual Uplift at the Kotel

This year’s Kotel visit was particularly intentional. I had prayers to recite for my family, a Mi Shebeirach to chant for my congregants struggling with illness, a note to place for someone about to marry and a desire to hear the Torah read by dear friends at what we consider our Jewish people’s prayer space.

Equally significantly, it was Rosh Hodesh, celebrating the new month of Adar and my rabbinic colleagues and I were planning to pray with Women of the Wall, an Israeli organization whose goal is to secure the rights of women to pray at the Kotel with singing, reading aloud from the Torah and wearing tallit and kippah. Just like women do in synagogues throughout the world.

It should have been a morning of inspiration and release. Instead I quickly lost focus and track of time because the security forces, hired and instructed by the ultra-orthodox chief rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch who controls the Kotel, spent inordinate amounts of time security-checking each non-orthodox individual, not for weapons, but for hidden Torah scrolls. (Women are forbidden by this rabbi’s decree from reading from Torah even though the Israel’s High Court of Justice decreed that the women should be permitted to pray as was their custom. So each month the women try to bring their own Torah scroll.)

I tried to stay close to Rabbi Gilad Kariv, a Member of Israel’s Knesset, who was carrying a Torah scroll into the Kotel plaza in hopes of giving it to the women. Rabbi Kariv’s parliamentary immunity protected him and allowed him to carry in a Torah scroll. Unfortunately it did not protect him, the women or any of us from the taunts or threats of violence from the bused-in crowd of ultra-orthodox boys and girls.

Harassed by Ultra-Orthodox Rabble-Rousers and Hired Security

Along the way I was shoved by the Kotel security and had to fend off both the intemperate taunts of the rabble-rousers and the physical aggressiveness of the security people. In the end I was prevented from completing my holy tasks by hoards of young yeshiva boys surrounding us, impeding our freedom of movement and whose yelling, whistle blowing and attempted kicks to my legs and private parts, created an abusive atmosphere that threatened to harm all of us and clearly desecrated this holy space.

So I never got near the Kotel itself, as we were hemmed in the plaza within fenced areas. I was unable to pray myself. I was prevented from hearing the women lead the prayers.

When security pushed us out, by slowly corralling us into smaller and smaller fenced-off areas, like cattle being returned to the corral, I was drained. I just wanted to get back on the bus. To sit with my thoughts. To escape the putrid prejudice. To process the horrid hatred I saw in the eyes of these young people. I was ashamed by these Jewish brothers and sisters who gathered for the sole purpose of preventing my female colleagues from being Jews in praying like they and we pray all over the world.

They Spit on the Torah

Yet as we neared the bus, far outside of the Kotel area, beyond the Dung Gate, a group of young orthodox women were gathered at the ready. As we passed by, they hocked thick wads of spit at us. Jews defiling other Jew who were leaving a holy prayer space.

And if that were not bad enough, they then committed an act so heinous that it would have the whole Jewish world up in arms had it been committed by a non-Jew. One young woman hocked a long thick strand of spit onto our Sefer Torah.

My heart stopped at this act of sinat chinam (baseless hatred) but my mind was reeling. I cannot even imagine the level of intentionality of hatred that would be necessary to convince them that Jews praying the same prayers but differently from them were such an abomination that even their Torah scrolls themselves were contemptible. Some adult rabbi/teacher must have taught these young people to hate this deeply. My heart broke for how these traditional Jewish young people had been misguided and how broken they now are from the essence of Torah Judaism.

On the bus, we cleaned the spit off the Sefer Torah.

Bereft, I said a quiet prayer for the brave Women of the Wall who faced their own abuse each month. At a time when I wanted to center their prayer leadership, I was prevented from doing so by this harassment. May they continue this sacred prayer-work with fortitude and courage.

I prayed too that sensible adult leaders would emerge soon to teach those rabble rousing young men and women to act with chesed (kindness) toward other Jews, toward God’s holy space and toward the sacred Torah scrolls (God’s gift to our people).

And then I opened my iPhone and quickly made an online donation to support the sacred work of Women of the Wall. (Perhaps, hearing this story, you will too.).

I left thinking: sha’alu shalom lirushalayim – pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all Israel. Especially at times like this, Jerusalem (and Israel) needs all the prayers it can get.