A Wall for all
The Western Wall is to undergo the biggest change since it entered Israeli hands in 1967, if a new plan by Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky is implemented.
Sharansky is proposing that the area available for prayer at the Wall be doubled, by including a section that was previously the site of excavations. This section will be available for Orthodox women who want to hold women-only services, for Reform and Conservative Jews who want to hold egalitarian services, and for others who wish to pray without gender division.
“We have a historic opportunity to make the Kotel a symbol of Jewish unity and diversity, instead of a place of contention and strife,” Sharansky wrote in a letter outlining his plan.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tasked Sharansky with finding a solution to the conflict over the Western Wall. For two decades, the interdenominational feminist group Women of the Wall has been fighting for the right of women to hold public prayers at the Wall. Police maintain that their attempts are illegal and regularly detain worshippers. At the group’s latest prayer gathering on Thursday, five women were detained.
“We’re really excited at the possibility of seeing and bring part of a big step towards pluralism at the Kotel,” the group’s press officer Shira Pruce told The AJN.
The rabbi of the Western Wall Shmuel Rabinowitz has surprised many by saying that he won’t stand in the way of the plan.
He released a statement saying that he hoped the Wall would “unite the people, as in the past, according to local customs and without deviation from Jewish law”. However, he decided not to oppose Sharansky’s proposal out of a desire “to put
the Wall beyond dispute and controversy”.
Other Charedi rabbis, though, seem poised to fight any changes at the Wall. “The Kotel isn’t ours to give away,” raged the editorial of the Jerusalem-based Chassidic-establishment newspaper Hamodia.
The Sharansky plan has a long way to go. It must be presented to Netanyahu, considered by the government, and only if approved will the lengthy process of implementation begin.
With Charedi protests looking certain, it is possible that the plan will only pass after revision. One of Women of the Wall’s biggest fears is that Sharansky’s idea to have both sections of the Wall, traditional and egalitarian, reached from the same plaza, will be revised, undermining the prestige of the egalitarian section. “We are not interested and we are not going to compromise if there’s any exile from the plaza,” said Pruce.
Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, head of Bar-Ilan University’s Centre for the Advancement of the Status of Women and a member of the UN Committee For Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, views the Sharansky plan as “extremely significant”.
She told The AJN that on one hand she is unsure about the “feasibility” of the plan, but on the other hand, the plan’s timing increases its chances of progress – it comes when Charedim are not represented in the government and when there is a strong contingency of 27 women in Knesset. “We are now, in terms of Israeli politics, at a significant point, a point of change,” Halperin-Kaddari said.
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