Women of the Wall

When Faye Lederman traveled to Jerusalem from New York in 1996, she sought out a women's prayer group. She wanted to feel at home in her homeland. She returned with a film that takes a look at the 10-year effort of women to win the legal right to pray as a group at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. This timely documentary provides insight into their struggle and what it means to be a progressive religious Jew in Israel. Despite the successful efforts of women to participate in Jewish religious life in many countries throughout the world, it is still forbidden for women to open the Torah or sing out loud at the holiest of Jewish sites, the Western Wall. Lederman makes a compelling case for looking at this issue both in terms of women's rights and in the context of religious pluralism and civil rights in Israel.

Producer/Director Faye Lederman received her MA degree in documentary film from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Her independent films include Women of the Wall, about the Jerusalem women's prayer group (SFJFF 2000), The New Old Country, about memory, nostalgia and history on Manhattan's lower east side, and A Good Uplift, about a bra store in the same neighborhood. Faye spent two years screening and self-distributing Women of the Wall, nationwide, using it as a discussion and organizing tool with Jewish community groups, schools, women's groups and interfaith organizations. This film received a Judah Magnes Museum award and has been screened at the Margaret Mead, Doubletake, and DOXA Documentary film festivals, and at Jewish festivals in New York, San Francisco, and Toronto among others. She is a member of New Day Films, a cooperative of independent social issue media makers committed to activist self-distribution, and is a Wexner Graduate Fellow in New York University's department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies. Faye's work has been supported by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, the NY State Council on the Arts, the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media, the Sister Fund, the Littauer Foundation, the Pacific Pioneer Fund and the Fleishackker Foundation.