Lesley Sachs, Executive Director of Women of the Wall, will present video and address our community about the group's struggles, successes, challenges, pluralistic prayer space, and more about this important ongoing topic for Israel and all Jews.

The Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, dramatically recaptured by the IDF in 1967, is today effectively an ultra Orthodox synagogue. Not only do men and women pray separately, but women are prohibited from praying out loud together, reading from the Torah, or wearing tallit and tefillin there.

For 28 years, a group of dedicated women have organized prayer services at the Kotel every Rosh Hodesh and have fought valiantly through Israel’s court system and the Knesset to ensure women’s right to pray freely at the Western Wall. Lesley Sachs, Executive Director, will talk about WOW’s struggles, successes, and challenges as well as the recent “Kotel Compromise.”

The Western Wall is the central gathering place of the Jewish people. Barring women’s full participation there and declaring that only ultra-Orthodox rites govern religious practice signifies the symbolic exclusion of women and non-Orthodox forms of Judaism from the religious life of the State of Israel. Come and learn about this important movement!