Jewish women win prayer rights

Men and women pray separately at the Western Wall

A long-standing ban on women reading aloud from the sacred Torah text or wearing prayer shawls at Jerusalem's Western Wall is to be lifted, Israel's Supreme Court has ruled.

Leaders of the politically powerful ultra-Orthodox community say such rituals are reserved for men, and they condemned the ruling as an abomination.

It will cause a terrible and violent dispute

Rabbi Michael Melchior

The prayer plaza at the Western Wall - Judaism's holiest site - already has separate sections for men and women.

The wall is all that remains of the biblical Jewish Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70AD.

The court set a six-month deadline for action.

The court ruled: "We hereby order the government to establish proper arrangements and conditions so that the petitioners can fulfil their right to worship, according to their custom, at the Western Wall."

The ruling is seen as a victory for liberal Reform Jews

Anat Hoffman, a religious rights activist and petitioner in the case against the government, called the ruling a turning point in Israeli society.

"I was ashamed that I lived in a city and belonged to a religion where a woman who prays there could be imprisoned for six months," she told Israel Radio. "Today that stain has been removed."

But Rabbi Michael Melchior, Israel's Minister for Jewish Diaspora Affairs, said: "It will cause a terrible and violent dispute."

Turning point

The government had argued that allowing liberal Reform Jewish women to hold services at the Western Wall would have endangered public security and offended other Jews.

Reform Jews make up 90% of the American-Jewish community, but they are a small minority in Israel, where ultra-Orthodox groups can make or break coalition governments.

Earlier ruling

An earlier supreme court ruling in 1994 found that the petitioners had the right in principle to "pray according to their own custom" at the Wall.

But that ruling left it unclear how the women's prayers would be arranged without causing offence to ultra-Orthodox worshippers.

Rabbi Moshe Gafni of the ultra-Orthodox Degel Hatorah party denounced the court's decision as "a shocking blow to devout Jews and Jewish tradition throughout the world".