Related story:
Pluralism at the Wall is part of Jewish tradition
The Kotel is not a synagogue. It is the national holy site of the Jewish people, site of millennia of Jewish devotion, memory, tears, hope. Jewish access to it was severely limited during much of Jewish history; Jews were barred from it altogether during Jordanian rule. The Kotel returned to Jewish hands in 1967, and all believed it would remain forever open to all Jews.
If only this were so.
In December of 1988, I was among a diverse group of women who held a women’s prayer service there. I read Torah right up against the stones, one of the highlights of my life. I have continued to go there, on my own, and with other women, ever since. I was among those who sued the State of Israel for — and won — recognition of the right of Jewish women to the same full expression at the Kotel that Jewish men have enjoyed there since 1967.
A deal was recently announced to expand egalitarian prayer options already available at Robinson’s Arch, an archaeological site adjacent to the Western Wall, and give the Reform and Conservative movements official recognition and state funding there. It was unveiled with great fanfare as a compromise that would bring peace and unity to Israel and the Jewish people.
The deal that supposedly promotes Progressive Judaism and tolerance in Israel in fact would formally make the Kotel a haredi, or ultra-Orthodox, synagogue. In exchange for liberal denominations gaining control of Robinson’s Arch, the deal would impose official haredi control of the Kotel, ensuring the haredi establishment’s power to bar anyone, including Modern Orthodox Jews. They have already announced that, given the Kotel, they will not tolerate Jewish women’s groups praying there.
A woman who wishes to pray there would have to adopt haredi practice: barred from praying out loud, reading from the Torah and donning tallit or tefillin. These are the same restrictions imposed on all Jews until 1967 and which — with the exception of Torah reading — women now freely enjoy. To do any of these things, women would be banished to Robinson’s Arch. If they are Orthodox and do not pray in mixed groups, they would have to reserve portable walls in advance and construct a pen around themselves.
Not surprisingly, the backers of this deal have not trumpeted this aspect of it. But we — founders and activists of Women of the Wall who remain committed to the group’s original goal of women’s prayer at the Kotel (hence our name, Original Women of the Wall) — are raising the alarm. It is not just that the rights and dignity of Jewish women would be bulldozed by this deal; the deal would vastly enhance the power of the fundamentalist rabbinical establishment, which makes marriage, divorce and conversion intrusive ordeals; which maintains politicized blacklists of women it labels guilty of adultery and of children it deems bastards; and which is engaged in a relentless push to expand its reach into the lives of Israelis.
The backers of this deal mislead, saying that it will create an egalitarian section at “the Western Wall.” It does no such thing. Robinson’s Arch is indeed, physically, a southern continuation of the wall of which the Kotel is a part. But it has never been a place at which Jews sought the presence of God, or went to commune with the vastness of Jewish history, memory and connection. To cite one American Jewish observer about the deal: “I was distressed at the transparent and condescending trick with Robinson’s Arch. I will never go there. An infuriating scam.”
If Robinson’s Arch is truly equal to the Kotel, as its backers assert, why not a time-sharing deal in which the haredim go to Robinson’s half the time? Unimaginable? Why? Where is the haredi compromise in this so-called compromise? It is said that their compromise is in having to tolerate public space for Jews different than themselves. But don’t all of us who are not haredi do that every day of the week?
Backers of this deal assert that it represents all parties. Yet we, who insist on Jewish women’s right to full expression at the Kotel, were deliberately excluded from any discussion of it. Our existence is well known. I and others filed suit in the Supreme Court this past November to enforce the right of Jewish women to read Torah at the Kotel. Our suit, brought by Susan Weiss of the Center for Women’s Justice, is very strong, as attested by the suddenness with which this new deal was concluded.
This deal is terrible policy. Trading away the rights of Jewish women is not the way to gain recognition for progressive Judaism in Israel.
Those of us who know anything about women’s history know that the rights of women are often trampled and sacrificed for allegedly greater causes. We are saying clearly: not this time. Our suits to realize all the hard-won rights of Jewish women at the Kotel will proceed. We will not be moved.
Shulamit S. Magnus is a founder of Women of the Wall, professor of Jewish studies and history at Oberlin College, and winner of a National Jewish Book Award. Formerly of Palo Alto, where she taught at Stanford University from 1991 to 1998, she now lives in Jerusalem.