Schism over women’s rights in Israel

by Samuel Burke
CNN

Israeli feminist Anat Hoffman has just finished a tour in the U.S., campaigning for support over her arrest in the ongoing struggle between secular and Orthodox Jews in Israel.

Hoffman is the Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and was arrested at the Western Wall in Jerusalem in 2010 for carrying a Torah at the holy site in Jerusalem. She told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “I was conducting a religious act that offends the feelings of others – and that’s against the law.” While women carrying a Torah in Reform Judaism is common place, it’s not sanctioned by Orthodox Jews, whose customs have become the norm at the Western Wall. Hoffman was never charged with a crime.

Hoffman said that even though women’s rights are a problem only within a very small group inside Orthodoxy, her arrest and the schisms between religious and secular Jews over women’s rights are indicative of the growing power of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel.
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