Western Wall must be liberated from growing Orthodox takeover

Yizhar Hess

At an important conference of Conservative Judaism, at the Van-Leer Institute in Jerusalem, Dr. Kobi Cohen-Hattab presented a study he conducted on the public struggle of the Masorti Movement in Israel against the continuing exclusion of non-Orthodox movements from the Kotel – the Western Wall.

…Immediately after the end of the Six-Day War, a great plaza was created next to the Kotel. Hundreds and thousands of people flowed to the Kotel during those days – religious, secular, ultra-Orthodox Jews from Israel and from abroad. For all of them, the Kotel served as a focal point of popular national identification. But then, for the first time in its history, iron barricades were placed in the forward part of the plaza, close to the Kotel itself. This was the first mehitzah, the first separation between men and women, in the history of the Kotel…

The escalation of more recent years is due particularly to Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, known as the “Rabbi of the Kotel.” He did not invent anything, but he perfected the system: fewer IDF swearing-in ceremonies were held; an attempt was made to separate the sexes at the ceremony in which new immigrants received their identity cards; signs calling for modesty were posted in every corner; Israeli flags suddenly disappeared (and meanwhile were returned). Most of world Jewry is not Orthodox, but the rabbi of the holiest place in the world to the Jewish people is Orthodox – and not just ordinary Orthodox, but Haredi.

Do you want to know how the Orthodox establishment in Israel bolsters its status? How it succeeds in creating institutions and functions, which are seemingly for the benefit of the public but which in practice deepen the systematic exclusion of non-Orthodox trends in Judaism and the alienation of world Jewry? The Kotel is a good example. More than 20 million shekels were given to the Western Wall Heritage Foundation in the course of one year, while the Masorti movement must provide all of its own equipment –Torah scrolls, Siddurs, and ushers – in order to enjoy a few hours a day in a certain section – I almost wrote “second-class section” – of the Western Wall.

 

We will continue to struggle for the Western Wall. Last Hanukkah the Masorti movement, along with other groups concerned with the growing extremism in Jerusalem, organized a candle lighting ceremony (mixed, Heaven forbid!) at the Kotel Plaza. Rabbi Gil Nativ, a Masorti rabbi who was among the paratroopers who freed the Kotel during the Six Day War, was honored with lighting one of the candles. When he concluded, he said that he well remembers the day the Kotel was liberated in 1967. Today, 42 years later, the Kotel needs to be returned to all of the Jewish people. The Kotel needs to be liberated a second time.

Attorney Yizhar Hess is the Director-General of the Masorti Movement in Israel

 
For the entire article
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3836276,00.html
 

• שבעים פנים לתורה