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| Women of the Wall with Israeli Knesset members |
(Scroll down for video) Hundreds of Jews including Orthodox Jews, packed a New York City synagogue to pray in solidarity with Jerusalem’s Women of the Wall, according to press reports in New York.
The hundreds of Jews who filled the halls of the Manhattan synagogue Tuesday morning all had very different relationships to Judaism. Some of the women came dressed in religious clothing usually reserved for men, like tallit and tefillin, while some did not. Some wore long skirts and others wore jeans.
There were women with white hair leaning on canes, students from a nearby elementary school and babies strapped to the chests of their parents. But all had the same huge smile glued to their face.
According to Hallel Silverman, the teenage niece and comedian Sarah Silverman, who made headlines last month when police arrested her in Jerusalem for praying with a tallit, that's because they were united by a common goal.
"There were hundreds of people with different beliefs who came together to fight for one thing they all have in common, Jewish equality," she said after the service. She and the other participants had come to pray in solidarity with Women of the Wall, who have been involved in a battle for decades with the Israeli government on whether and how they are allowed to pray at the Western Wall.
Several female Knesset members came to the Western Wall dressed in Jewish ritual prayers shawls along with the controversial group, Women of the Wall, thereby preventing their arrest, according to press reports in Israel.
The Knesset members arrived with the group on Tuesday morning for a joint prayer session at the Western Wall. The presence of the Knesset members prevented the arrest of the Women of the Wall members by the police, police said.
Knesset member Stav Shafir, along with MK Tamar Zandberg and MK Michal Rozin joined the group, which holds regular prayer sessions that challenge the current Jewish division of roles between the sexes, at the holiest site in Judaism.
300 women participated in the prayer session Tuesday, according to reports. They wore prayer shawls traditionally worn by men and met in the women's section of the Western Wall Plaza, in violation of a Supreme Court order that they hold their prayers at the Robinson's Arch.
The Women of the Wall also wear yarmulkes and put on tefillin.
The Western Wall guards tried to prevent the female MKs from entering the Western Wall Plaza, but were unsuccessful.
Mks Shafir, Rozin and Zandberg are not religious.
MK Shafir, said after the prayer session: "At first they tried to shut down the entrance to the Western Wall Plaza and justified it by saying that we are a disturbance to the public peace, but there is nothing that a hundred women armed with tallits cannot do. Surrounded by police, we stood before the Western Wall and prayed."
According to Jewish law women are allowed to wear tefillin and Jewish ritual prayer shawls. According to some rabbis, women are commanded to wear a tallit.Mobile video not loading? Click here to view