Almost immediately, a female police officer approached me with a video camera about 10 inches from my face. “Change your tallit to look like a scarf,” she said. I looked at her puzzled. I’ve prayed with Women of the Wall a few times throughout the year, and no one from security had ever made a request like that. “Change your tallit!,” she barked again. “But everyone else is wearing their tallit in a regular way,”—hanging over their shoulders—I said as I motioned to rest of the crowd. She didn’t budge, and I draped one side of my tallit around my neck. Another officer approached and said, “that’s not good enough. Make it look like a scarf.”

I got frustrated at this point. “Can you please leave me alone, I’m trying to pray.” “You have to change your tallit,” said the male officer, as he volunteered to help change the way I was wearing my tallit. I rolled my eyes and draped the second corner of my tallit over my neck, creating a cape of tzitzit. I finished praying and all of us at the Wall began to join in song, arm in arm, making our way over to Robinson’s Arch to read Torah and begin the additional musaf prayer for Rosh Chodesh.

The women’s rights struggle within the religious sphere in Israel is nothing new. Throughout my year in Israel, there have been campaigns about women’s voices being heard (literally), gender segregated buses, and public images of women allowed on posters or billboards. Women’s rights in public prayer spaces is just one of the many issues. An article about this week’s Kotel incident cites a 2001 law that states, “it is illegal for women to perform religious practices traditionally done by men in Orthodox Jewish practice at the Western Wall, such as reading from a Torah scroll, wearing tefillin or a tallit, or blowing a shofar.”

I had no idea that the police had their eyes on us, but as we moved through the security gates I made eye contact with the same female officer who recorded me and gave me the initial instructions to change my tallit. She pointed at me and said to another officer, “that’s her.” Immediately I was brought to a stairway along with two other rabbinical students.

“Israeli ID, now”

“I’m not an Israeli citizen.”

“OK, passport.”

“I don’t have it on me.” (Thank God.)

“OK, any other ID.” I handed him my Texas state driver’s license, which I’m sure meant nothing to him, and he took down my full name and address. He asked me for my phone number in Israel and my address. I hesitated, but then offered the officer my information. I was told, after a bit of waiting, that we will be contacted for further questioning and investigation, but that we were not being arrested at this point.

Behind me, I felt the support of the dozens of women and men singing, along with the spirits of all those who cry out against the injustice I am experiencing, standing there with the police. The voices behind me changed from a niggun, or tune, to the words of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, “kol haolam kulo, gesher tzar me’od, vahaikar lo l’fached klal—The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to fear at all.” These words have never felt more powerful to me.

As the officer took down our information, I sang, with tears in my eyes, “vahaikar lo l’fached klal.” Yes, this is scary. But I will not fear. The homeland we dream of, that we have dreamed of for thousands of years, is not one that arrests women for religious expression through wearing a tallit. The homeland I know we can attain is one that embraces multiple forms of Judaism to create a richer, deeper, and stronger Jewish State.

Sarit Horwitz is a second year Rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, currently studying in Jerusalem at the Schechter Institute.

(photo: flickr)

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For many, watching sports is more than just a leisure activity. You live and die by your team’s successes and are never afraid to denounce questionable moves by management. But according to dynamic sportswriter Dave Zirin, owners are taking their fans to the cleaners and getting away with it. In Zirin’s book Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining The Games We Love, he takes on the noble task of profiling some truly shameless owners: the kinds that insist on billion dollar taxpayer-funded stadiums while simultaneously threatening to relocate the team if their demands are not met. The book is a wake-up call for the fans (the people paying for unnecessary new stadiums) to start demanding partial ownership in exchange for their tax dollars. Some of these owners (as you might imagine) are Jewish and as such will not be appearing on our Big Jewcy list. In this interview, conducted via email and edited for clarity, Dave talks about sports fans recourses during lockouts and the touchy issue of athletes speaking their minds.

The NFL Lockout and its very possible NBA counterpart are continually highlighting the flaws in ownership that you mention in your book. What will it take for fans to demand tangible changes in ownership structure? Why has there not been more public fan outrage?

Fans need to organize themselves as independent actors and demand that the owners end the lockout. One problem is that this conflict gets portrayed as “billionaires vs millionaires” instead of the reality that owners ripped up the collective bargaining agreement and locked the players out. Fans need to focus their anger and pressure on the owners. I’m on the board of an organization called www.sportsfans.org with the idea of organizing fans so our voice isn’t forgotten. It’s a sad state when we are locked out of the very arenas we are subsidizing.

You have mentioned before that you think one of the byproducts of the NFL work stoppage will be a player speaking out against concussions as a rebuttal to the lockout’s legitimacy. Do you have any more specifics to add to your claim? Or perhaps comment on an insightful player you think could be a more vocal spokesperson to represent the player’s opinions to the public?

There have been several remarkable quotes from players and they don’t get a great deal of play. My favorite was Troy Polamalu of the Steelers who said, “It’s unfortunate right now. I think what the players are fighting for is something. A lot of people think it’s millionaires versus billionaires and that’s the huge argument. The fact is its people fighting against big business. The big business argument is ‘I got the money and I got the power therefore I can tell you what to do.’ That’s life everywhere. I think this is a time when the football players are standing up and saying, ‘No, no, no, the people have the power.’

As for concussions, the discussion is there. That’s why the owners have backed off their demand for a longer season. The hypocrisy of cracking down on violent hits while pushing for more games was too monstrous.

You’ve discussed a couple of athletes’ divisive reactions to the Bin Laden story. It seems like sports teams view players speaking their minds as a giant headache. Is this repressive attitude preventing many athletes from speaking out on important issues, or are they going to find a way based on the variety of social media platforms available to them?

I think social media had made a huge difference. One reason is that the level of mistrust between players and the mainstream media is pretty profound. It allows for statements that are more impulsive and frankly more honest. The problem is that it hasn’t changed the dynamic of official media blowback that you reference.

You’re have a book about The American sprinter John Carlos coming out later this year. What in particular about his story did you gravitate towards?

I wanted the story behind the symbol. Having met and spoken with John Carlos on many occasions, I was so taken with his story; his childhood in Harlem, his rebellion as a tween marching on the principals office, and then the mountain of pain he had yo endure after his medal stand moment. It was a story we had to tell.

Are there any current athletes who you have had enlightening interactions with? Maybe someone who you think could do with a little more face time to be able to intelligently discuss pressing issues in their sport?

Definitely Etan Thomas of the Atlanta Hawks. Definitely Scott Fujita of the Cleveland Browns. Definitely Monica McNutt of the Georgetown Hoyas. These are some of the sharpest people I know, not just the sharpest athletes.

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