Female Israeli activist arrested for praying at Wailing Wall

An Israeli activist who defied orthodox Jewish custom by leading a group of women in open prayer at Jerusalem's Wailing Wall has been told to expect years in prison for breaching the peace.

Many in the country's rapidly growing ultra-orthodox community believe that a woman's role at the wall should be limited to silent worship. Women should not be allowed, they believe, to read aloud, sing or read from the Torah.

Anat Hoffman has been awaiting her fate since being arrested in August amid a worsening debate about her campaign to allow women to pray at Judaism's holiest site in the same way as men. The police have now chosen to ask prosecutors to charge her with "disrupting a policeman performing his duties under dire circumstances", a crime that carries a mandatory prison sentence of up to three years.



That she is facing so stern a request for punishment from the authorities is evidence, Mrs Hoffman said, of the rise of the religion Right in what is allegedly a secular country, which deems inter-faith and inter-racial marriage illegal.



Mrs Hoffman's case is a stark illustration of the growing power of religious groups in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem where the segregation of the sexes is becoming more common. She and her followers have been taunted and even assaulted by ultra-orthodox men at the Wailing Wall, part of the western wall of the Jewish Temple that was otherwise destroyed by the Romans in 70AD.



"The religious world in Israel has become more and more extreme," Mrs Hoffman said. "Much like in Islam, religiosity is now measured by the distances at which women are kept from society."



In August, she recalled recently: "They took me to the jail and told me: 'we're going to put an end to this behaviour; you won't get away with it any more'."

There are now over 100 state bus routes, many of them in Jerusalem, that offer segregated services requiring women to sit in the back. Israel's High Court yesterday ruled that the practice could continue. Many offices in the city also keep the sexes apart while a growing number of clinics require men and women to book appointments on different days.



"The religious world in Israel has become more and more extreme," Mrs Hoffman said. "Much like in Islam, religiosity is now measured by the distances at which women are kept from society."



Despite the threat of jail, Mrs Hoffman and her supporters are continuing their monthly services at the Wailing Wall. Mrs Hoffman and her fellow members of the Women of the Wall group test the boundaries of religious strictures by singing and praying out loud but they refrain from reading the Torah.

As they broke into song at a recent gathering, the men's section grew more restive as resentment started to stir. A bearded man, his black cloak marking him as ultra-orthodox, shook a fist at the women and yelled: "Burn in hell, you dogs."