Libi BaMizrach

Someone sent me a comment about my previous posting via email; I am publishing here, along with my response.  (The system would not allow such a long comment, nor the hyperlinks.)) Keep those comments coming!!! YLO You apparently believe that the chareidi women were committing a Kiddush Hashem by attempting to peacefully fill up the space and block the non chareidi women from davening. This was "great!" you effuse. Wow, how wonderful. Let's prevent Jewish women from praying.What a kiddush Hashem that must be. But I simply don't understand why blocking these women from praying there was was also not a chillul Hashem. Maybe I am confused but I just don't understand the entire machloket. Women are allowed to don teffilin and talitot, right? So what in the world is the problem with having these Jews express their Judaism this way? Would that all Jews, men and women, were to feel this way and want to don talitot and tefillin! These women should be praise...

I really have no time to write today, as I have to finish putting together material for all the various classes that I hope אי"ה to deliver during Shavuos.   (At least I have the easy job tonight; it is much easier to give a class at 3 AM then to stay awake listening to someone else...) Nevertheless, I need to briefly comment on two items: 1) The Women of the Wall (WOW) I first heard about the counter demonstration this past Friday Rosh Chodesh, when calling my mother שתחי' to wish her a good Shabbos.  "Did you hear about the great Kiddush Hashem at the Kotel this morning?," she asked me?  "The Rabbonim, really played this one right.  They asked tens of thousands of women and girls to come to Kotel at 6:30 AM, before the monthly 7:00 AM visit of the WOW, and to completely fill up the women's area with the people who are the ones who always daven there, not just the crocodile-tear "deeply spiritual" Anat Hoffmans, so that when the WOW come the...