Women of the Wall's Anat Hoffman, wired to fight for pluralism
| Published date | 29 March 2024 |
| Author | JUDITH SUDILOVSKY |
| Publication title | Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel) |
But she is on her way to the Yitzhak Navon Train Station by foot – since the roads are closed for the parade – and will soon be back in Haifa, where the golden-domed Baha'i Temple graces the skyline and "the Mediterranean Sea licks the city at the foot of the Carmel" a mere two hours yet a world away from Jerusalem, where she was born and where her grandparents founded Kibbutz Ramat Rachel.
Following their megillah reading – usually one of the WoW's least controversial readings – the 14 women who had come to read and hear the megillah on the gray and cloudy morning of March 25 recited a prayer for the quick return of the hostages.
This, Hoffman's 35th megillah reading with WoW – the multi-denominational feminist organization she helped found to secure women's rights to pray at the Western Wall – also marks her upcoming 70th birthday, on April 2, and celebrates WoW's three and a half decades in action.
"The happiness muscle is not working this morning, much as I try. And there are different texts that say that even at the worst time, you have to work that muscle. I am unable to work this muscle, not this year," she says, over a mug of sahlav at a favorite cafe in downtown Jerusalem. Hoffman is as quick to compliment the kitchen staff for their excellent execution of the thick, hot milky, orchid-flavored drink topped with nuts and cinnamon as she is to ask a woman soldier to turn down the volume on the Zoom call she is conducting at the next table sans earphones.
Finding a pluralistic, tolerant community in Haifa
Hoffman moved to Haifa not just because of her relationship with a native of the northern mixed Arab-Jewish city but also because, she says, she found a community where racism, ethnocentrism, and chauvinism are not an everyday, minute-by-minute occurrence. Many of her neighbors are also former Jerusalemites. The desire to move grew gradually, she said, due to many things – everyday scenes of covert or overt racism; of Arabs being stopped in the street for identity checks. For example, she says, sometimes when a policeman or policewoman stops an Arab in the street, it is not just for security concerns but out of territoriality.
"Israel has a right to defend herself. I think that is legitimat.e and I support that," she says.
"But it is all around us and we just don't see it. Okay, so someone reading this will say: 'Oh, the bleeding-heart leftist. What does she want? For a terrorist to kill us?' No, I don't. But I don't want us to stop being human.
"And even though I fully understand the...
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