Personal testimony: I was at Dizengoff Square, it was terrible

Israel Zaira, the leader of the organization that made headlines, tried to persuade the police to remove the protesters, but it didn't help. However, this is still a public area. On the other hand, the calls of the protesters to remove the chain of flags were not heeded. The police did not consider it to be a barrier, as the local officer stated, "After all, you can pass between the flags." The tensions began to rise, and derogatory shouts and cries of "shame, shame" and "no forgiveness" were directed towards the worshipers. At the edge of the square, people spontaneously began to stack and collect the chairs. When I asked who told them to collect them, one of them sarcastically replied, "I saw that they were simply collecting them, so I helped them."

Instead, arguments began to develop with those claims that we've heard so much about in recent months that there's no need to mention. At a certain point, Zaira's family left the scene to the bewilderment of the audience, and some of the women among the worshipers broke into tears. This scene I will perhaps never forget. I recall a verse from Proverbs:

"טוֹבָה תּוֹכַחַת מְגֻלָּה מֵאַהֲבָה מְסֻתָּרֶת: נֶאֱמָנִים פִּצְעֵי אוֹהֵב וְנַעְתָּרוֹת נְשִׁיקוֹת שׂוֹנֵא"

"Faithful are the wounds of a friend, but deceitful are the kisses of an enemy."

Suddenly, from the praying crowd, Shimon Riklin emerges, a bit confused, and the crowd scolds him and pushes him away. In the street, I also encounter the right-wing Haredi publicist, Yedidya Meir, who thinks we used to work together at Yedioth. He tells me that every year he comes to Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv. He seems relaxed, but "his inner being is filled with sadness and wonder." "This time you'll definitely have something to write about," I tell him. "I'm not interested in writing. I just wanted to pray," he says to me.

Even in Bima Square, there is an organization for new English-speaking immigrants called 'TRIBE' that held a prayer service with a partition. Even there, the protesters arrived and disrupted the prayer. "I moved here from Toronto a year ago," a young man who participated in the prayer at the location told me. "It's true that there were some partitions, but no one really paid attention to them," he said, still in shock.

In Beit Perat there was a symbolic partition for "Shalom Bayit"

If there was any comfort in this evening, which I did by bicycle (not electric) from Kiryat Ono to Tel Aviv, it was for me the experience of the Kippur meeting of the 'Beit Perat' community that gathered at the 'Bar Ilan' school on Rothschild Boulevard. This is an 'Israeli seminary' of 'new and renewed Israelis' ' who come to study programs before and after the army, a sort of stream of renewed Judaism from Baruch Spinoza to Rabbi Kook.

In the prayer "Kol Nidre," they turned the basketball arena into a "miniature sanctuary" under the title: "All Israel have a share," a well-known verse from the Sanhedrin tractate. And there, in that white-covered basketball arena, perhaps they found a solution to this issue that has been troubling us so much. Inside the arena, women and men, secular and religious, in a variety of kippot and colors, prayed with grace. At the entrance to the arena, a sign was hung that read: "Our community has been engaging in a dialogue for many years about the gap between the place of women in the prayer space and the sense of participation of women in our times in various fields of life. Many of us are requesting a unifying prayer space, alongside many of us who are concerned about significant changes and the creation of too great a divide between our prayer and the prayers of the generations that preceded us."

In the prayer of "Beit Perat," it seems that they manage to compromise: both women and men read from the Torah and the Haftarah (according to the ruling of Rabbi Daniel Sperber). The prayer follows Orthodox tradition, led by a cantor, and only in a part of the prayer area is a partition placed for those who prefer it. Extremists on both sides, those who prefer everything or nothing, will certainly object to this arrangement. However, in Judaism, there is a clear allowance to bend our sacred principles for the sake of "peace in the home." But are we also willing to be a bit flexible with our cherished principles for the sake of "peace in the home"?

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Eitan Elhadez-Barak is a reporter, photographer and researcher of rituals and customs in Israel.