Hundreds attend Tel Aviv rally featuring egalitarian prayer, protests against government

Several hundred people attend a prayer service at Tel Aviv’s Habima Square featuring a protest action against the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“We are here to show there is another kind of Judaism, an inclusive and tolerant one,” Galia Sadan, a Reform rabbi from Tel Aviv’s Beit Daniel congregation, says during the event.

The prayer, whose organizers said was for democracy and the State of Israel, is a response to a since-canceled rally announced by Public Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir following clashes between secularists and devout Jews at Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square on Yom Kippur.

“We have reclaimed the Israeli flag and the Declaration of Independence,” Yaya Fink, a former Labor party activist and head of the left-leaning Darkenu lobby group, tells the crowd at Habima Square, referencing symbols of the protest movement against Netanyahu’s government.

“Now the time has come to liberate Judaism and reclaim it for all Jews instead of the radicals who claim it belongs only to them,” he adds.

Sadan says, “there is another kind of Judaism, based on human dignity and on de-mo-cracy,” repeating a slogan of anti-government protesters and prompting chants from many in the crowd. She then blows a shofar and recites a prayer for the State of Israel