This Week

The Enmity Within

Above: Rabbi Stephen
Fuchs, from Beth Israel
Congregation in West
Har t ford, Conn., argues
with an Orthodox Jew
near the Western Wall
in Jerusalem Monday,
Feb. 1, 1999.

North American Reform rabbis visiting Israel
walk smack into the middle of the country's religious tensions.

U Simmering tensions between

LARRY DERFNER
Israel Correspondent

fervently Orthodox and Reform Jerusalem
Jews in Israel have broken into

the open, with each side seem-

ingly willing to turn small

events into large causes as elec-

tion-time partisanship adds to

the hostility. The strains echo in

America, where even some com-

mitted friends of Israel feel con-

fused about what seems to be

happening in the Jewish state.

2/5
1 999

6 Detroit Jewish News

ensions over Israel's Jewish
nature flared anew this
week. On Monday, 33
North American Reform
rabbis, including kippah-wearing
women, held their annual mixed-
gender minyan at the Western Wall.
Despite the protection of police bar-
ricades and dozens of cops, more
than 100 haredi (fervently observant)
yeshiva students hollered abuses at
them such as "Nazis" and "haters of
Israel."
There was no violence, as there
has been in the past, and the haredi
turnout was relatively small, despite
some intense pre-publicity. Yet, it
wasn't just fringe elements doing the
yelling, but parts of the foundation
of Israel's democratically elected —

and now lame-duck — government.
"What you are doing here is not
prayer, but Christian sex," said
Agudat Yisrael Knesset member
Avraham Lazarson. "You are degrad-
ing the Torah and the Jewish peo-
ple.
Yigal Bibi, deputy minister of reli-
gious affairs and a National Religious
Party Knesset member, had said on
the eve of the rabbis' minyan: "This
marginal movement has turned into
a major issue in this country. We
hear about the Reform in the reli-
gious councils, in the Supreme
Court, at the Western Wall. Enough,
we're sick of it. They come here once
a year, and they want to disturb the
peace of this holy place."
Police originally had agreed to let
the Reform rabbis hold the minyan
in the middle of the large Western
Wall plaza; they later decided that
the threat of physical attack by

3)

Haredim meant that moving the
group to the back of the plaza, and
within the boundaries of metal barri-
cades manned by police, would be
wiser.
"It's a shame and disgrace that
rabbis have to pray inside a 'cage' [of
barricades] at the Western Wall," said
Rabbi Amiel Hirsch, head of the
Association of Reform Zionists of
America (ARZA).
The minyan had been scheduled
well in advance, but events of the
previous week had given fresh impe-
tus to it. The Knesset had passed a
c-
bill designed to bypass Supreme
Court rulings and keep non-
Orthodox representatives off local
religious councils, which are in
charge of maintaining religious ser-
vices such as synagogues, ritual baths
and cemeteries.

ENMITY

on page 10

