Archaeologists Discover: God's Wife?

From Yahoo News UK:

Female figurines and inscribed prayers to a "divine couple" found in temples in Israel suggest that the “one God” of the Bible may not have been entirely alone.

A recent excavation in Tel Motza, not far from Jerusalem, found what archaeologists believe to have been a ritual building - with clay figures of animals and men from the time of the First Temple, according to Israel's Haaretz news site.

The find suggests that Iron Age religion in the area around Jerusalem may not have been monotheistic just before the time the Hebrew Bible – the basis of the Old Testament - started to be written.

Now experts are increasingly suggesting that far from there being “one God”, there were many. 

One expert, Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou of the University of Exeter, says there is “increasing evidence” of Israelites worshipping several gods - including one who may have been seen as Yahweh’s “wife”.

Women Warriors of Mossad

From Globes:

They are one of the State of Israel's most important assets. If we sleep soundly at night, it's in large part thanks to them. If we win the next war, they will have a considerable share in the victory. Our security is entrusted to their hands, but, despite their importance to the country, you won't read about them in the newspapers, you won't see them on television, you can't applaud them. Recognition and glory are not their lot. You can't identify them, because they operate under cover. The women of the shadows.

Their brains invent daring and ingenious operations that make the difference between success and failure. They bring to bear a capacity to improvise, rare expertise, sophisticated weaponry, command of languages, and psychological insight. They have to get inside the mind of the other.

These women working in secret are senior operatives of Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, an organization that needs no wordy introductions about the cunning and boldness of its operations.

They live under threat to their lives, to their families, and to their freedom. They disappear from their homes, emerge under various identities, conceal themselves, rub shoulders with the enemy. It's hard to grasp the price they pay. A spy who is captured in an enemy country can expect tough interrogation, torture, and execution.

See also:

Women of History - The Women of Mossad

Women of History - Mossad, Women & Israel

Palestinian Women: Narrative Histories

From the World News:

It is perhaps an inevitable irony that a recent spate of anti-Nakba polemic in Israel has placed the topic firmly on the public agenda, stimulating not only press and media coverage but also renewed interest in the more serious histories of the period. Dr Fatmeh Kassem’s book is therefore most timely. This book does not deal with the macro-history of ‘who hit who back first, and harder’. Rather it focuses on the micro, on the lives of elderly Palestinian women who survived the emptying of the Palestinian towns of Lyd(Lod) and Ramleh (Ramla) in 1948 by the Israeli forces, towns now incorporated into the Israeli state.

These oral histories come from women who are multi-marginalized: as Palestinian second-class citizens living in Jewish-Arab so-called mixed towns; as working-class, often illiterate, subjects and, not least, as women silenced by the male dominated discourse of their own, and the wider society. In her readable and moving book, Kassem has not only salvaged important memories of painful personal and collective histories, she has empowered her interviewees to speak , perhaps for the first time, in their own voices and given them a place on the public stage. At the same time, this is a work of theoretical substance and a significant contribution to the growing body of literature on the Nakba as well as to feminist discourse analysis.

Haneen Zoab: Palestinian Voice In Israel

From Xinhuanet:

"Every woman can be a woman of frustration. I'm not optimistic. I'm not pessimistic. I'm just struggling," said Haneen Zoabi, a Palestinian female legislator in the Israeli parliament, Knesset.

Zoabi has made a history in Israel as the first woman to be elected in the Knesset on an Arab Party's list. At her 41, she has been representing the Arab National Democratic Party in the parliament since 2009.

Sitting in her office in Nazareth, viewed by the Palestinian Arabs in Israel as their effective capital, Zoabi argues in an interview with Xinhua that her real task is to advance the cause of ending Israel's occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a cause for both Palestinian men and women.

Dona Gracia - Ahead of Her Time

From the Jerusalem Post:

Once the wealthiest woman in the world, Dona Gracia planned to establish an autonomous Jewish community in Tiberias.

The museum conducts weekend seminars about the life and times of Dona Gracia whose story fired Cohen's imagination to the extent that she pushed for the Education Ministry to include the study of Dona Gracia in school curricula. Tzvi Tzameret, the Chairman of the Education Ministry's Pedagogic Secretariat, agreed that it was high time for Dona Gracia to come out of the mothballs of the distant past. The upshot is that Israeli high school students as well as soldiers in the IDF will now learn of her plans to establish an autonomous Jewish community in Tiberias, which from the second to the tenth centuries was the largest Jewish city in the Galilee, and a great seat of Jewish learning.

The 500th anniversary of Dona Gracia's birth was celebrated on Sunday at Beit Hanassi in the presence of President Shimon Peres, Israel's fifth President Yitzhak Navon, who heads the National Authority for Ladino, is a former Education Minister and is descended on both sides from long lines of Sephardi rabbis, Education Minister Gideon Saar, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch among a host of dignitaries.

Israel: Women Protest Discrimination

From Ynet News:

Dozens of women and men marched in an ultra-Orthodox area in central Jerusalem on Wednesday, in protest of the discrimination between men and women on the streets of the Mea Shearim neighborhood during the Sukkot holiday.

The police set up barriers near the Shabbat Square, and the protestors retraced their steps and ended the rally. Loud arguments were heard between the protestors and local haredi residents.

At the start of the procession, its organizers stressed that the protest would be held "without any unnecessary provocations" and expressed their hope that they would not encounter violence.

The march was stopped several meters before the Shabbat Square. Large police forces were dispatched to the area, including mounted police, and the demonstration was dispersed shortly afterwards.

Golan Women Adhere to Syrian Identity

From Day Press News:

During a meeting with Chairwoman of the General Women Union Majida Kutait, the women from the delegation of the people of the occupied Syrian Golan affirmed their adherence to their Syrian identity and their belonging to the motherland Syria, saying that the Golan will be liberated soon and that the Syrian flag will be hoisted over all its soil.

The women expressed pride in Syria's national and patriotic stance, stressing that the occupation will not undermine their determination to resist it, and that this determination is bolstered by the support provided by Syria to the people of the occupied Golan.

The women called on the international community to assume serious stances and pressure the Israeli occupation authorities to cease their hostile practices and comply with resolutions of international legitimacy and withdraw from the occupied Golan.

Women Defy With Symbolic Action

From UPI:

A group of Israeli women say they smuggled a dozen Palestinian women and four children into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem for a day of fun in defiance of Israeli law.

The Palestinians were treated to a meal at a restaurant, swimming in the Mediterranean and a bit of sightseeing about two weeks ago, Haaretz reported Tuesday.

The Israeli women, including writers Ilana Hammerman and Klil Zisapel, picked up the Palestinian women in their villages, after meeting with them twice previously, and brought them into Israel, avoiding security forces at West Bank checkpoints.

Hammerman had accomplished a similar outing with three teenage Palestinian girls in May, Haaretz said. Peace activists approached her about doing the second trip, the Tel Aviv newspaper said. None of the Palestinians had permits to enter Israel.

"We all came, we met the women, we took them in our own cars. We pulled a fast one on the army," Hammerman said.

"We passed the checkpoints in our cars, knowingly breaking the laws of entry into Israel," the Israeli women said in an ad published in the Hebrew weekend edition of Haaretz.

"We don't recognize the legality of the entry law into Israel, which allows every Israeli and every Jew to move freely throughout most of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean, and denies this right to the Palestinians, to whom this land also belongs."

Hammerman called it "a symbolic act" meant to fuel debate.

Women-Only Gaza Flotilla

From the Guardian:

A ship bearing aid for Gaza is preparing to leave Tripoli in Lebanon this weekend in the latest attempt to defy the Israeli blockade – with only women on board.

The Saint Mariam, or Virgin Mary, has a multi-faith international passenger list, including the Lebanese singer May Hariri and a group of nuns from the US. "They are nuns, doctors, lawyers, journalists, Christians and Muslims," said Mona, one of the participants who, along with the other women, has adopted the ship's name, Mariam.

The Mariam and its sister ship, Naji Alali, had hoped to set off several weeks ago but faced several delays after Israel launched a diplomatic mission to pressure Lebanon to stop the mission.

The co-ordinator of the voyage, Samar al-Haj, told the Guardian this week the Lebanese government had given permission for the boats to leave for Cyprus, the first leg of the journey, this weekend.

Women of the Wall Continue Fight

From JTA:

Women of the Wall has launched a global campaign to support their right to pray with Torah scrolls at the Western Wall.

The Jerusalem-based group wants 10,000 Jewish women around the world to send photos of themselves holding Torah scrolls to key Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky. The campaign is to show that Jewish women are free to hold Torah scrolls everywhere except at the Wall, Judaism’s most holy site.

The campaign was inspired by the July 12 arrest of the group’s leader, Anat Hoffman, who was taken into custody for holding a Torah scroll at the Wall. An Israeli Supreme Court ruling forbids women reading from a Torah scroll at the site.

The photos are being sent with a message that reads, in part:

“Women of the Wall are not alone. Our daughters and our rabbis, our mothers and our grandmothers, our cantors and our teachers hold the Torah, read from the Torah, and study the Torah every day … Only in Jerusalem do women pray with fear and only in Jerusalem are women treated as criminals for practicing Judaism.”

The campaign began after Tisha b’Av on July 19 and extends through Simchat Torah, which ends Oct 1.

The Women of Mossad

From the Telegraph:

Meir Amit, the director-general of Mossad in the 1960s, laid down the rules for kidon women in a document that remains in force today. It contains the following passage: “A woman has skills a man simply does not have. She knows how to listen. Pillow talk is not a problem for her. The history of modern intelligence is filled with accounts of women who have used their sex for the good of their country... It is not just sleeping with someone if required. It is to lead a man to believe you will do so in return for what he has to tell you.”

'Gideon’s Spies: The Inside Story of Israel’s Legendary Secret Service’ by Gordon Thomas is available from Telegraph Books.

The Mystery of "Penelope"

From the Daily Mail:

To her neighbours in the nearby Rue Verdun, Penelope was just another eccentric foreigner living her life as best she could in the heart of war-torn west Beirut.

What has, however, become apparent is that far from being an innocent Englishwoman abroad, Penelope was a Mossad spy trained to use her feminine wiles to inveigle her way into the life of one of the world's most feared terrorists - and then help kill him.

Evidence that has emerged over the years suggests that she was in fact a British woman by the name of Erika Maria Chambers, and she was born and brought up in London as part of a wealthy Anglo-Jewish family.

But there is one further, extraordinary, twist to the story. Erika Maria Chambers, 'Mossad assassin', has a brother. His name is Nicholas Chambers - and he is a QC and leading civil court judge who is a pillar of the British judicial establishment.

Israel: Women's Prayer Quorum

From Ynet News (Israel News):

Women's prayer quorum during the Purim holiday have become in recent years a widespread phenomenon in many religious communities in Israel, but a new Jewish ruling considers them illegal and forbidden.

Chief Ramat Gan Rabbi Yaakov Ariel stated that "to begin with, forming a women's prayer quorum is against the Halacha," and accused the participating women of withdrawing from society on the basis of "social and feminist considerations".

Rabbi Ariel, who is one of the leaders of Religious Zionism and a senior arbiter, warned against the phenomenon Thursday during an interview with Arutz Sheva (Channel Seven) and claimed the it is "not right" and "forbidden."

According to Ariel, "it's good that women want to be involved, but if a woman wants to be more god-fearing and pray in a quorum – she should do so in a men's quorum. The Torah did not command women to pray in a quorum," he added.

Religious women's organization Kolech criticized Rabbi Ariel's ruling. A spokeswoman for the organization told Ynet: "The Halacha states that a woman may fulfill the duty of prayer for another woman. The same ruling was also stated in the Shulchan Aruch (book of religious law from the Rabbi Yosef Karo), by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and more.

Women Soldiers' Testimonies

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

After last year's war in Gaza, and the later report for the United Nations Human Rights Council by Justice Richard Goldstone that accused Israel of war crimes, sensitivity to how Israel is perceived abroad has been more heightened than ever. Yet the most piercing insights into the Israeli-Arab conflict today have nothing to do with the foreign media. They come from within Israeli society itself.

In the past two years, internationally acclaimed films such as Waltz With Bashir, Ajami, and Lebanon, have added exceptional context to the deep divisions within Israeli society and the long-term effects of the conflict on its people. More disturbing still are the verbatim accounts of some of the soldiers who have served in the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The damaging effects of the occupation, not just on Palestinians but on the soldiers themselves, are laid bare in a booklet published last week by the group Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli army veterans who have taken it upon themselves to expose life in the occupied territories to the Israeli public. Titled Women Soldiers' Testimonies, the booklet details the experiences of more than 40 female soldiers who have served in various roles in the territories since 2000.

Israel: Transportation Segredation

From JTA:

Three years ago, a 57-year-old grandmother got on a bus in Israel departing Rechovot for Givat Shmuel and sat in a vacant seat in the front.

Shortly after taking her seat, the woman was approached by a fervently Orthodox man who demanded she move to the back of the bus with the rest of the women.

Unbeknownst to the woman, who asked JTA to be identified only as H., she had boarded one of the so-called mehadrin (super kosher) bus lines, on which the predominantly ultra-Orthodox, or haredi, ridership imposes sex-segregated seating. The man told H. that segregated seating had been sanctioned by the rabbis and by Egged, the state-owned bus company that operates the line.

H., who is herself religious, refused, prompting a barrage of verbal abuse from the man.

The man harassed her for the entire ride. Nobody, including the driver, came to her aid.

H. is among a group of women who filed affidavits as part of a petition to Israel’s Supreme Court to ban gender-based segregation on Israeli public buses. The petition was filed by the Israel Religious Action Center, which is associated with the Reform movement.

Before issuing any ruling, the court referred the matter to Israel’s Transportation Ministry. In January, more than three years since the IRAC petition was filed, Israeli Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz is expected to issue the government's official position.

Some haredi passengers defend sex segregation, saying it upholds Jewish rules concerning sexual modesty. On mehadrin lines, women sit in the back and men in the front in order to avoid physical contact. Drivers do not enforce this code, but the IRAC considers such practices on public buses to be a fundamental violation of women's rights. It also says the practice has no basis in Jewish law, or halachah.

Israel: Women Arrested At Wall

From Reuters:

In a motion read by Ms Safina Kwekwe Tsungu, an Eala member from Kenya, the legislators further urged EAC member countries to ensure that women get comprehensive and accessible health services and programmes.

They expressed deep concerns on the plight of women in refugee camps and those internally displaced by armed conflicts in their home countries, saying they were chief targets of organised violence.

After a protest by Orthodox worshippers who spotted her, police escorted her to a police post and detained her for two hours before releasing her and ordering her to stay away from the holy site for 15 days, a spokeswoman said.

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said Frankel was detained on suspicion of wearing a prayer shawl in violation of an Israeli high court ruling stating that women cannot wear religious garments at the site, in keeping with Orthodox rules. "Tensions flared, there was pushing and shouting and police intervened to prevent violence," Rosenfeld said. There were no other arrests and nobody was hurt, he added.

Frankel may face charges of performing a religious act that offends others, a statute that mandates a maximum six month jail term and a 10,000 shekel ($2,000) fine, said Anat Hoffman, director of a group that sponsors "Women of the Wall".