From Rabbi Ellen Lewis - Being Part of Women at the Wall

My first visit to the Western Wall was in 1974. It was jarring. Those idealized photos of the Wall, the ones so familiar to me from the walls of suburban New Jersey homes when I was growing up, hadn't included a mechitza.

And so I hadn't anticipated how conflicted I would feel the first time I stood on the women's side of the mechitza. The men's side seemed to reverberate with song and Torah chant; the women's side was filled with muffled praying and quiet sobbing. The men's side grabbed strangers and pulled them into minyanim; the women's side left each woman alone with her private longings and celebrations.

I tried a few more times to find in the Wall what others seemed to find but the only relationship I was able to achieve was some kind of an uncomfortable truce.

About ten years later, I returned to Israel on a UJA rabbinic mission. The custom then (unknown to me at the time) was to visit the Wall late at night for a final emotional bonding experience before departing for a night flight home from Ben Gurion.

The bus dropped us off at the Wall. The male rabbis headed straight for the Wall and immediately began davening together; the two or three of us women just stood there and looked at each other, wondering what to do. If the goal of that mission was to reinforce a sense of "We are One," then the mission had failed in its aim, at least for the three of us.

I never quite got over that feeling of conflict the Wall inspired in me. I wanted to love it but couldn't. Then today,something changed. We left the hotel at 6:45 a.m. to join with the Women of the Wall in celebrating their 20th anniversary. We - men and women - filled two buses.

At the Wall, the women entered the women's side and stood toward the rear. After warning us that her voice wasn't loud, the shalichat tzibur began to pray. Our participation was quiet until we reached the Hallel. Our prayer leader told us to stop and take a breath. Then we began to sing the psalms together, tentatively at first, then louder and stronger. Suddenly people approached us and began to yell at us. "Aten gevarim!" was only one of the insults I heard. "Assur!" was another.

But we were more determined to ignore their voices and continue in prayer than we were to respond or fight back. Our prayers were our armor and our strength. We persisted, joyously and collectively, until we completed Hallel and heaved a communal sigh of relief. Then we moved to another area of the Wall excavation and finished the service.

I have always loved the Hallel but today its words took on an added meaning. I finally felt like I was a part of something at the Wall. And close behind us and next to us behind the mechitza stood our male colleagues, joining their voices with ours in prayer and supporting us in our attempt to make the Wall our place, too.

Mishenichnas Adar, marbim b'simcha. Today our happiness was that much the greater.