Contrary to sensational reports in the US press which highlighted the fact that a few marginal ruffians misbehaved, the early morning Rosh Chodesh Av prayers this past Monday were a Kiddush Hashem dominated by thousands of chareidi women and girls who gathered at the Kosel, per directive of our gedolei Yisroel, headed by HaRav Aharon Leib Shteinman, for the Rosh Chodesh shacharis service as well as to express a protest against the desecration of the holy remnant of our Beis Hamikdash. It served as a passive, dignified protest against those heretical women who come to this sanctified site each Rosh Chodesh in order to undermine the holiness of the place and to transgress universal prohibitions and customs.
In response to the holy call of Torah leadership, these masses of women arrived very early in the morning and quietly filled the entire plaza of the Kosel's women's section so that when they arrived later, the small heretical group of women were forced to gather in a corner of the upper plaza near the exit. Police refused to allow them to provoke the much larger gathering of women by going into the lower plaza. Thus was the chillul Hashem considerably minimized and the defilement of this holiest of all places to the Jewish people from which the Shechinah has never budged — was all but snuffed out.
"They are Reform women who do not believe in what it says inside of the tefillin! What right do they have to put them on?" said HaRav Avigdor Nebentzahl, rov of the Old City.
"In the tefillin it says `And Hashem spoke to Moshe saying.' They do not believe in the speech of Hashem to Moshe. It also says, `Hashem smote all the firstborn of Mitzrayim,' and I do not think that they believe that. It says that whoever keeps the Torah will be in Eretz Yisroel and, if chas vesholom not, then the opposite. They do not believe in that. So what right do they have to wear tefillin?
"What we have to do is to pray to merit to see Moshiach soon, in our days, Amen."
