REMEMBER HOW THE WINGERS DEFEND ISRAEL BY SAYING IT IS A DEMOCRACY?

Well, the Orthodox Jews (their Fundies) RULE the religious life in Israel and they have the police to support their claims. As usual in the Abrahamic religions, females are second-class citizens.

Facing arrest, catcalls, Israeli women pray at Western Wall
By Sheera Frenkel | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, August 26, 2010

JERUSALEM — The women come from all over Israel every month to pray at the Western Wall, one of Judaism's holiest sites.

As their voices rise and fall in prayer, onlookers gawk and occasionally harass the praying women. Israeli police have arrested several women on charges of disturbing the peace; Orthodox men and women have spit at, cursed and attacked others.

According to the Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law, only men may wear kippas (head coverings) and tallits (prayer shawls). Men alone are allowed to read from the Pentateuch, or Torah, Judaism's founding text and also the first five books of the Christian Bible, while women are expected to pray with barely a murmur.

Shmuel Rabinowitz, the Orthodox chief rabbi of the Western Wall, told McClatchy that the women's group was interested only in provocation and that "there is no value" to its form of prayer, which offends other female worshippers at the site.

When Women of the Wall was founded in 1988, the mostly American and British Jews sought the right for women to pray audibly at the wall while wearing the religious clothing of their choice. They also believe that women should be able to handle and pray from the Torah, a practice that led last month to the arrest of Anat Hoffman, one of the founding members, by Israeli police. Frankel herself was arrested for wearing a tallit last year. Now she wears it wrapped around her shoulders like a scarf.