Thousands of worshippers arrived Wednesday morning at the Western Wall plaza, beginning at dawn, and more are expected to arrive throughout the day as the Jewish People mark the first day of the month of Adar.
The Western Wall Heritage Foundation reported that during the festive prayers, a group of activists from "Women of the Wall" blocked the main entrance and exit to the Western Wall plaza.
According to the Foundation's, the group members held a Torah reading ceremony while disregarding the police's and the Western Wall ushers' requests, as thousands of worshipers arrived at the site, including Muslim worshipers marking the first day of Ramadan.
The Foundation stressed that the blockage created an unusual crowd and presented a safety risk for the thousands of people present in the plaza.
On Tuesday, the Foundation presented its claims to the Supreme Court judges regarding what it referred to as "repeated provocations" by the Women of the Wall on the first day of every Jewish month.
According to them, Wednesday morning's incident went beyond the usual norms and included, they stressed, "a real danger to human life."
The Women of the Wall responded: "The ushers of the Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall leave us no choice. We are fed up with the mistreatment and the attempts to harm our prayers. We are fed up with the fact that despite there being no legal or halakhic (pertaining to Jewish law -ed.) prohibition, the Chief Rabbi of the Western Wall prevents us in every way from reading from the Torah scroll. We will read from the Torah on the first day of the Jewish month, and implement what the court decided a long time ago: Women of the Wall’s prayer with a Torah scroll is a local custom, and we are allowed to read from the Torah at the Western Wall."