In what appears to be the spirit of failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who called Trump’s voters “basket of deplorables,” an email sent to the followers of Women of the Wall on Monday ran with the heading: “A lovely Bat Mitzvah at the Western Wall surrounded by menacing hoards.”
They obviously meant to write “menacing hordes,” which is both more comprehensible and more insulting. But wait, there’s more.
The elitist jeer was followed by the stunningly myopic condemnation: “The current political atmosphere in Israel is dangerously polarized.”
No kidding. Naturally, the best way to calm this dangerously polarized atmosphere is to stick it to the menacing hordes by conducting a Bat Mitzva with a girl reading from the Torah in front of the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh Adar.
Never mind that the girl was reading from a single leaf of Torah, rendering it posul-disqualified. Never mind that this and similar provocative scenes, with or without Torah scrolls, have been repeated for some 30 years, about once a month. Do the WOW truly believe their actions do anything to alleviate Israel’s dangerously polarized atmosphere?
Twelve-year-old Noa Brenner, who came to the Jerusalem from Hod HaSharon near Tel Aviv with her parents, grandmother and three siblings, “hoping for a festive celebration at the Kotel,” as the email described it, was greeted instead with “jeers, boos, shrieking whistles, jostling,” and also “a wave of hatred that threatened to engulf her.”
Would you do this to your own child, schlep her to a place where her actions, which would have been appropriate inside a synagogue, obviously stirred up harsh reactions from a large group who find women’s public prayer objectionable?
“About two hundred valiant women succeeded in pushing their way through the crush of a hostile, swearing ultra-Orthodox public, to join Noa and continue our long struggle,” goes the WOW email. “We were called whores, evildoers, and worse, Nazis. Some of the women who joined us, who’d been kicked and jostled, arrived to the women’s section in tears.”
And, naturally, this shocking description of a 30-year provocation ended with a call to “Click HERE to donate in honor of Noa and her courageous spirit…”
The cycle is complete…