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An Inspiration to All Who Struggle for Religious and Gender Equality

"Our souls yearn to pray, in peace, in the sacred place, to read from our holy Torah, together with other Jewish women."
--from the

In Israel today, the historic Western Wall, known as the Kotel, a holy site for Jewish people, is under the religious authority of the Orthodox rabbinate. Women have only limited rights to practice Jewish ritual in its precincts.

This passionate book documents the legendary grassroots and legal struggle of a determined group of Jewish women from Israel, the United States, and other parts of the world--known as the Women of the Wall--to win the right to pray out loud together as a group, according to Jewish law; wear ritual objects; and read from Torah scrolls at the Western Wall.

Eyewitness accounts of physical violence and intimidation, inspiring personal stories, and interpretations of legal and classical Jewish (halakhic) texts bring to life the historic and ongoing struggle that the Women of the Wall face in their everyday fight for religious and gender equality.

Phyllis Chesler, a founder and board member of the International Committee for Women of the Wall, has been fighting for Jewish women's religious and human rights for more than thirty years. She is a psychologist and the author of eleven books, including Women and Madness and Woman's Inhumanity to Woman. She cofounded the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network.

Rivka Haut is also a founder of the International Committee for Women of the Wall, and a codirector. She is the coeditor of Daughters of the King: Women and the Synagogue. She is the director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance's Agunah Advocacy Project.