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Arthur M. Horwitz
Publisher / Executive Editor
ahorwitz@renmedia.us

Turmoil Over Prayer

Pluralistic gathering is destined at Israel’s Western Wall.

I

sraeli leaders should let wisdom
prevail and enforce a derailed gov-
ernment-approved plan to expand a
separate, pluralistic prayer space at the
Western Wall.
Four years in the making, the con-
tentious ritual change in Jerusalem’s
Old City not only would recognize the
expanding non-Orthodox presence at
Judaism’s holiest site, but also would pre-
serve Orthodox control of the traditional
prayer sections there. The Wall is central
to all Jews — in Israel and across the
Jewish diaspora.
Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu is
supportive of the plan
but hasn’t ordered its
enforcement nearly
a year after Cabinet
approval.
The prime minister’s
stonewalling of advanc-
Robert Sklar
Contributing Editor ing expanded egalitar-
ian prayer at the Wall,
presumably in defer-
ence to opposition from Israel’s haredi
Orthodox Jews, is disconcerting, to say
the least.
For Netanyahu to bow to pressure from
the religiously insular wing of his Cabinet
is to fail the Jewish people. By any mea-
sure, we’re as religiously diverse as we are
ethnically rich.

BALANCING ACT
The proposal may not be ideal, but it
does accentuate the art of compromise
to the longstanding divide over who is
a Jew. Israel’s Chief Rabbinate and the
haredi Orthodox parties linked to it
oppose the plan, fearing legitimizing
of Judaism’s Reform and Conservative
movements.
Fuller egalitarian prayer at the Wall
would be in keeping with Reform and
Conservative custom yet solidify the
sanctity of tradition in the area of the
Wall under Orthodox purview.
The prime minister should take a cue
from the Jewish Federations of North
America (JFNA) and acknowledge the
“growing sense of urgency” among
American Jews to see a Wall scenario that
embraces “a diversity of Jewish religious
practice and expression.” He was in the
vanguard of creating a mixed-gender
prayer space before politics intervened.
It was Netanyahu who, before a Nov. 1
board meeting of the Jewish Agency for
Israel (JAFI), declared, “We are one peo-
ple and we have one Wall.” He vowed to
act on the stalled deal, which was struck
in January.

6 December 8 • 2016

F. Kevin Browett
Chief Operating Officer
kbrowett@renmedia.us

| Editorial

The prime minister’s stonewalling of
advancing expanded egalitarian prayer
at the Wall, presumably in deference
to opposition from Israel’s haredi
Orthodox Jews, is disconcerting.

BROAD EFFECT
The agreement, brokered by JAFI Chairman
Natan Sharansky, was negotiated by the
liberal Women of the Wall, the haredi-led
Western Wall Heritage Foundation, the
Jewish Agency for Israel, the Israeli govern-
ment and Israel’s Progressive (Reform) and
Masorti (Conservative) streams of Judaism.
At stake is religious pluralism in Israel,
a Jewish state by mandate with a secular
government and a haredi-leaning Chief
Rabbinate.
Under the agreement, an inclusive wor-
ship space to the south of the Western
Wall Plaza near Robinson’s Arch would be
significantly enlarged. The plan represents
the ultimate compromise to a lingering
dilemma dividing Israel’s haredi leadership
and the Reform and Conservative move-
ments — dominant movements in the U.S.
and gaining traction in Israel.
A pluralist authority would oversee the
pluralistic prayer space.
The agreement would enable the
haredi leadership to retain oversight at the
Orthodox section of the Wall — a tradition
dating to 1968. That’s when the Ministry of
Religious Affairs first erected a mechitzah,
or religious barrier, there to separate men
and women, taking advantage of Israel’s
claim to the Wall following the Six-Day War
of 1967.
The agreement fell apart when a haredi-
driven petition filed in June with the
Supreme Court of Israel sought a stay. In
reaction, the Women of the Wall joined
with Progressive and Masorti leadership in
October to petition the high court to order
the government to move on the plan.
The International Rabbinic Fellowship
(IRF), an Orthodox rabbinical group,
said the plan “can be improved upon” by
demarcating a space for Orthodox women’s
groups that “do not want to engage in full
egalitarian prayer but do want to read from
the Torah.” Still, the IRF gave its support,
calling the plan “a positive step” to mak-
ing the Wall “a public place where all Jews
can experience the presence of the Divine
according to the dictates of their con-
science.”

Benjamin
Netanyahu

INFLAMMATORY CONDUCT
It doesn’t help that Israel’s Sephardi
Orthodox Shas political party has proposed
a bill that calls for fining or jailing Western
Wall visitors who join in egalitarian prayer
or female visitors to the Wall who wear a
tallit, lay tefillin or read from the Torah.
Israel is the Jewish state — as such the
ancestral homeland for all Jews. Diaspora
Jews don’t control Israeli government deci-
sions but their views should matter, espe-
cially in regard to prayer at the Wall, which
is in Israel but belongs to the Jewish people.
Pluralistic prayer at the Wall is a concern
between the state and the Jewish people,
not between the haredi and non-Orthodox
Jews.
Equally unnerving is the haredi response
to the Women of the Wall bringing Torah
scrolls into or wearing prayer shawls at the
women’s section of the traditional prayer
space, against Western Wall Heritage
Foundation policy. Branding those who
perform the rituals “Nazis” and “whores” is
abhorrent.
World Jews have more pressing themes
to address than restrictive prayer at the
Wall: for example, festering anti-Zionism in
vast parts of the Middle East; dangerously
rising anti-Jewish sentiment in the West;
and a relentless bias against Israel in some
corridors of the United Nations. In Israel,
high domestic housing and food prices and
a host of religious lifecycle issues also must
be addressed.
So the quicker striking a balance to the
ideological dispute at the Wall is achieved
— in effect, securing Orthodox tradition
without shunning non-Orthodox beliefs —
the better. It’s unfortunate the public and
legal struggle must drag on because a fac-
tion that helped draft the promising agree-
ment reneged on backing it.
There’s no perfect solution to the reli-
gious rift at the Western Wall, but the status
quo clearly isn’t the way forward.
Here’s hoping Israel cultivates a politi-
cal environment to tweak the Sharansky-
brokered plan and usher it into law —
quickly — so it doesn’t die on the vine of
Jewish infighting.

*

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