A brief history of Jewish worship at Judaism’s holiest place of prayer, where, until it came under Israeli jurisdiction, a mixing of genders was the norm By Amanda Borschel-Dan From the mid-1800s, photographs of Jews praying together at the Western Wall became common on the walls of houses across the Western world. Today, a rich collection…
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I can’t believe someone actually posted this article. The author is either deliberately misleading her readers or she is so brainwashed by liberal/leftist rhetoric that she can no longer discern fact from fiction.
At first the author writes: “Mixed prayer, with men and women praying together, appears to be the norm — or at least a viable option — in these archival images.”
Later she admits, “Under the Ottoman Empire, restrictions were again imposed on the Jews by 1705, including the inability to create permanent fixtures such as partitions”.
Similar restrictions were enforced under British rule and yet, despite these restrictions, mixed public prayers WERE NOT the norm and probably did not exist at all. That is what the archival images show us.
In one image, there are only women and children with (possibly) a handful of men separated from the women at the far end. In others, we see only men. Another image shows men on one side and women on the other. Other images show only 3 or 4 people – hardly a prayer service. Most likely they are family members reciting psalms together (there is no prohibition in that).
It is therefore utterly ridiculous to say that these images indicate that mixed prayers were the norm. Quite the contrary, we clearly see that the Jews tried to maintain a separation of the genders even in their difficult predicament.
Furthermore, to say that mixed prayers were a “viable option” is plain demagoguery. Of course it was a viable option. Who would stop them? The British? The Turks? That’s exactly the point, even though it was theoretically a viable option, Jews throughout the ages rejected mixed services because they observed Jewish Law (halacha), unlike today’s modern reformists.