Years ago a friend introduced me to a game on my phone that she was addicted to. I realized that the better I got at it, the easier it became.

When I asked, she told me that yes, the game actually helped you win if you were doing well.

Soon after I learned this, I got bored and stopped playing. It wasn’t as much fun when I realized the game was cheating on my behalf.

I’m as competitive as the next person. And a helping hand is always welcome. But making the game too easy took away my incentive; winning was guaranteed.

There are days in life when the assurance of getting your heart’s desire is priceless. There are times too when even a small win feels beyond our grasp.

Today is Rosh Hodesh Sivan, the first day of the month of Sivan on the Jewish calendar. The first of every month is a holiday set aside specifically for women, and there is a group of women in Israel who try to celebrate it by praying together at Jerusalem’s Western Wall. Preferably, by reading from a Torah scroll.

But the rules of the game are stacked against them. You can learn more at their website, which you will find at the end of this blog post. The short version is that the people who are in charge of the Western Wall are ultra-Orthodox, and do not permit women to pray as men do.

If that was the worst of it, it would be bad enough. But the women who attempt to pray there are harassed in the worst ways. Knocked down, arrested, their Torah scrolls torn from their arms, their prayer books stomped on the ground. Yes, the books with the same prayers that the men consider so sacred, their books are not permitted to even touch the ground.

I have stood and prayed with these women. It is not pretty. It is hard to pray under such circumstances, when people are screaming and yelling and blowing whistles, and trying to do everything possible to disrupt your prayers.

Still, even as the situation worsens, month after month, year after year, they keep trying.

The human spirit is indomitable. I pray that the rules of the game — that the game itself — will turn in their favor.

And I know that despite the virtually insurmountable barriers they face, they will continue. God bless them.

If you would like to support the Women of the Wall, visit their website: womenofthewall.org.il