Supporting a woman’s right to pray at the Western Wall while donning a tallit and tefillin, a group of Bay Area Jewish institutions will hold a prayer service at Union Square in San Francisco. The event takes place 10 a.m. Jan. 10.
Co-sponsored by Congregation Emanu-El, Coastside Torah Circle, Congregation Kol Shofar, Beit Tikkun, Jewish Mosaic, Congregation Sha’ar Zahav and others, the prayer service will feature rabbis, cantors and congregants, both men and women.
The service was organized in response to the Nov. 18 arrest of Nofrat Frenkel, an Israeli woman who wore a tallit while praying at the Kotel, violating a longstanding Orthodox injunction. The group Women of the Wall, composed of women of all Jewish denominations, has for years protested prohibitions against women chanting Torah and wearing traditional prayer garb at Judaism’s holiest site.
“Israel needs to hear from the Jewish community loud and clear that this is not acceptable behavior,” said prayer service co-organizer Abby Caplin of San Francisco. “This is to alert people to what’s happening. This affects all of us.”
For more information, contact Caplin at [email protected] or (415) 255-9981.