JERUSALEM —A long-running battle over worship at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest shrine, was rejoined Thursday as Israeli police arrested five Jewish women who wore prayer shawls at a morning service, contrary to Orthodox practice enforced at the site.
The arrests came two days after disclosure of a potentially groundbreaking plan that could allow for non-Orthodox services to be held in the area on an equal footing with those conducted according to Orthodox tradition.
“The Wall belongs to all of us!” shouted Lesley Sachs, director of the activist group Women of the Wall, as she was led away by police officers, wrapped in a prayer shawl. An ultra-Orthodox heckler shouted: “Get out of here! Don’t desecrate this holy place. It isn’t yours!”
Detentions of women wearing prayer shawls at the Western Wall in recent months, in line with an Israeli Supreme Court decision upholding traditional religious practice, have created an uproar among American Jews and prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seek a formula that could broaden the types of prayer permitted at the holy site.
Let me get this straight-men own the West Wall? Would these be the same ultra-orthodox who have a religious exemption from their children serving in the Israeli military while those young people (both men and women) from less orthodox families serve their time? Something is rotten here.-
I thought Israel was a more enlightened country than this. The West Wall came under Israeli control after the 6-Day War in 1967. The Wall has been controlled and dominated by ultra-orthodox practice since then. Women have been barred and kept behind a partition. Special dress codes have been enforced:
” …dress codes mandating modest clothing for women and a head covering for men, and rituals at the site supervised by a specially appointed Orthodox rabbi.”
Women of the Wall, a protest group primarily for equal worship rights at The Wall and who have a particularly strong backing in the United States, have been pushing back against these strict exclusionary codes for 2 decades. Not much attention was paid until recent arrests by the Israeli police, clearly a church/state merger. The police crackdown has brought waves of outrage from American Jewish groups who pour quite a lot of money into Israel.
Plans to designate a particular area of the Western Wall for less orthodox worship have been devised but not yet implemented. The plan isn’t without hurdles because of archaeological site rules and also Muslim restrictions over their portion. They aren’t any more generous towards women having equal access to worship than the orthodox Jews.
The Wall is still serving as an ultra-Orthodox synagogue. At what point is Israel going to tell the rabbinical overseers that they simply cannot discriminate towards women? Could it be that this group is calling too many of the shots in Israel? Will Americans cut off much of their financial support over women’s rights? How about Jews in other countries? Will they support this discrimination? It appears the entire issue is rapidly coming to a head.
In a letter to Jewish Agency leaders, Sharansky, a former cabinet minister and Soviet dissident, wrote that “we have an historic opportunity to make the Wall a symbol of Jewish unity and diversity instead of a place of contention and strife.”
The Western Wall rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz, who has called Women of the Wall members provocateurs, declared that he would not oppose Sharansky’s plan.
“In the name of unity and the desire to leave the Wall outside any debate and dispute, I will not oppose the proposal,” Rabinowitz said in a statement, noting that the proposed new prayer area “is not part of the Western Wall synagogue.”
Women’s rights to equal access and uber-orthodox are on a collision course over access to worship. Any bets? Are Americans, both Jews and non-Jews, so used to that wall of separation between church and state that we are intolerant of other more gender based practices? Americans seem to be the most vocal against gender inequity within the Catholic Church. Will American Jews force this practice at The Wall to end?
Further reading:
I agree with what you wrote, Moon.
And don’t get my wife started on the ultra-orthodox.
I wish she would chime in! Send her on in, please!!
@Cargo
any religion taken to its extreme never bodes well for women….Period!
I find this absolute incredible. The Jews have been persecuted for centuries,
yet one group sees fit to persecute worshipping women!
It is beyond “one group” that forbids women to worship at the Wall, Punchak. These women are violating Israeli law (at least until some court finds to the contrary) and were taken into custody by government police. The situation illustrates the difficulties of trying to sustain a religious state that has multiple population elements.
Scout, you’re 100% correct, but I would take it a step further. This situation illustrates what happens when religion and government are intermingled and even the same entity, as in Israel’s case. Whether it’s Spain in the 15th and 16th centuries, England in the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, Sharia law, or modern Israel, religion and government don’t mix well, unless you want exclusion, inequality and favoritism. The separation of church and state should be an iron curtain!
Your comment is right on the mark Scout and middleman. You would think Israel would have learned something from the Holocaust regarding religious perscution. Perhaps they did except for perscuting each other!
A problem with having a religious-based state is that it is very difficult, conceptually, to deal with minority religions and cultures.
Perhaps Thomas Jefferson was way before his time in dealing with such issues when he wrote the Virginia ‘opinion’ on church and state.