Deena Rosenblatt/New York Daily News
Before the arrest (from left) Hallel Silverman, Susan Silverman and Ellen Nemhauser prayed in traditional shawls, which are banned for women at the Wailing Wall.
JERUSALEM — Ribald comic Sarah Silverman’s rabbi sister and her teenage niece were arrested at a political demonstration at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism's holiest site.
Rabbi Susan Silverman, Hallel Silverman, 17, and eight others were detained for several hours after being charged with violating an Israeli court ruling that bans women from wearing traditional prayer-shawls or praying too loudly at the holy site.
"I was proud to take a stand for something I believe in. There is inequality at the Western Wall,” Hallel Silverman told the Daily News. “The space allowed for women is becoming smaller and smaller. If the law is changed, I will be proud to have played a small part. ... The rules are outdated. It's 2013 and we've moved on. It's time the law moved on too.”
Also proud was the comedian, who tweeted her excitement.
“SO proud of my amazing sister & niece for their balls out civil disobedience. Ur the tits!,” Sarah Silverman posted on her Twitter account.
The women were booked, fingerprinted and had their mugshots taken. They are banned from visiting the Western Wall for 15 days.
Israel Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the women's actions were "against regulations set by the High Court," a reference to a 2003 decision that only allowed Orthodox Jewish prayer customs at the site.
Susan Silverman, center, and niece Hallel Silverman are warned by an Israeli police officer before Monday’s arrest.
The women say there is nothing in Jewish law forbidding any of their rituals.
Hallel Silverman said it was her first time participating in a monthly service held by the group Women of the Wall to protest a ruling they say violates their religious freedom.
The other women arrested included a pregnant Israeli rabbinical student, Rabbi Debra Cantor of Connecticut and Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin of New York.
Susan Silverman, the comedian’s older sister, is the former rabbi of Or Hadash congregation in Germantown, Md. Hallel Silverman has lived in Israel with her parents and four siblings since 2006.
The Women of the Wall meet monthly to protest the ultra-orthodox control of the Western Wall shrine, where a tall fence divides men and women.
The High Court ruling forbids women from reading a Torah scroll, wearing prayer shawls or singing loudly.
Jon Furniss/Jon Furniss/Invision/AP
Comic Sarah Silverman later tweeted her pride over her sister’s arrest in Jerusalem.
Until the court stepped in, the women's prayer meetings were often attacked by ultra-Orthodox thugs who threw chairs at them across the barrier.
One of the witnesses to Monday’s arrest was Yitzhak Yiftah, one of three paratroopers who helped capture the Western Wall from Jordan in 1967 and was immortalized with two buddies in the most famous photograph taken that day.
"I decided to come here to show my support for all those who wish to pray at the Western Wall whatever way they wish, so long as they are not doing anything immoral," said Yiftah. "It breaks my heart that the ultra-Orthodox have decided the Western Wall belongs to them.”
Fellow paratrooper, Eilon Bartov, added, "It is astonishing that women can be arrested in this country for wearing prayer shawls.”
Rabbi Silverman said the law must be changed to recognize full freedom of Jewish expression at the shrine.
"The way Israel is run by the religious establishment at the Wall is an insult to God," she told the Daily News.
"It's like spitting on Sinai," she added, referring to the mountain where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
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