Thousands of Yidden streamed to the Kosel Plaza this morning, beginning at the first light of dawn, to mark Rosh Chodesh Adar with special tefillos. Crowds continued to grow throughout the morning as Yidden ushered in the new month with heartfelt davening at the Kosel.

The Kosel Heritage Foundation reported that during the tefillos, activists affiliated with the radical Women of the Wall group obstructed the primary entrance and exit to the Kosel Plaza.

According to the Foundation, members of the group conducted a “Torah reading” while ignoring requests from police officers and Kosel ushers, even as thousands of mispallelim were arriving at the site. The morning also coincided with the start of Ramadan, bringing additional Muslim worshippers to the area.

The Foundation emphasized that the blocked access points led to unusual congestion and created what it described as a significant safety concern for the many people gathered in the Plaza.

A day earlier, representatives of the Foundation appeared before Supreme Court justices to present their position regarding what they termed “repeated provocations” by Women of the Wall on every Rosh Chodesh.

They stated that Wednesday morning’s events exceeded prior incidents and, they stressed, posed “a real danger to human life.”

In response, Women of the Wall issued a statement saying: “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 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.”

{Matzav.com}