Newton Teen Makes History at the Western Wall, and Writes About It

Juliet Pesner said that rarely does a 16-year-old Jewish girl from a Massachusetts suburb get a chance to be a part of history, but this Newton junior, who is studying in Israel for a semester, did on Monday, April 20.

She took part in an event where women of all Jewish denominations delivered a full-sized Torah scroll to the women’s side of the Western Wall. It was the first time in history that there, they conducted a full Torah service.

Pesner, who is in Israel as part of a Reform Jewish study-abroad program, shared her experience in a moving piece on Reform Judaism.

“Just minutes after the initial victory, some Orthodox men began to shout angrily, while others tried to come through the divider and physically take the scroll back from the women,” she writes. “In both Hebrew and English, these men insulted our right to read Torah and even our very womanhood. One shouted, ‘You’re worse than goyim [a derogatory term for non-Jews], disrespecting the Kotel! You’re like dogs!’ The Conservative men who’d helped pass us the Torah held back the Orthodox men, and security guards arrived to calm the unrest. The guards, one of whom was a woman, immediately took the women’s side, ushering some of the angry men out of the area.”

You can follow Pesner on Twitter at @JulieAnnPesner. President Barack Obama does.

Read the entire blog by Pesner here.

Photo via Union for Reform Judaism/Facebook