Women of the Wall and the Kotel – The hotspot of religious conflict in Israel?

"Two hundred thousand at Western Wall in first pilgrimage since dispersion,” trumpeted The Jerusalem Post on June 15, 1967, reporting on the masses of people who arrived at the Kotel on Shavuot, just one week after the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem. “Some wept, but most faces were wreathed in smiles. For 13 continuous hours, a colorful variety of people trudged along in perfect order, stopping patiently when told to do so at each of the six successive barriers set up by the police to regulate the flow.”

Fifty-four years later, visits to the Western Wall do not always elicit smiles from its visitors, particularly on Rosh Hodesh, the first day of the Hebrew month, when Women of the Wall, a group of Jewish women, gathers on the women’s side of the plaza to pray. On those days, tension, heckling, and yelling are a more apt description of the goings-on at the Western Wall Plaza.

Every Rosh Hodesh, between 100 and 200 women, most draped in colorful prayer shawls, and others wearing phylacteries (tefillin), pray and sing enthusiastically.

The organization’s central mission, as per its website, is “to attain social and legal recognition of our right, as women, to wear prayer shawls, pray, and read from the Torah, collectively and aloud, at the Western Wall.”

Since the organization’s founding some 32 years ago, its efforts have been met with opposition by ultra-Orthodox groups, which have attempted to disrupt its services.

How has the Western Wall, the location of the last remnant of the Temple, turned into a place of conflict and strife? Have the monthly struggles between Women of the Wall and its opposition turned the Kotel into a hot spot of religious conflict in Israel today?

ANAT HOFFMAN, founder of Women of the Wall, says that the group came into existence almost by chance.

“In December 1988, a group of Jewish women gathered in Jerusalem for the first International Jewish Feminist Conference on the Empowerment of Women,” recalls Hoffman. “It was their idea to go to the Wall to recite the prayer for the State of Israel and read from the Torah.

“As an Israeli participant, I thought it was a crazy idea, and I wasn’t going to join. They rented a bus, brought a Torah, and intended to go to the Wall.”

The hotel where the convention was being held would not rent them a folding table for the Torah, so the women turned to Hoffman, who provided a table.

Smiling, she says, “I joined as a schlepper of the folding table.”

After the conference ended, Hoffman, together with a group of other women of all denominations – Orthodox, Reform and Conservative – decided to form a group that would “continue to fight for the Torah.” They developed four strategic goals – the right to pray out loud, to read from the Torah, to wear a tallit, and don tefillin.

“In 32 years,” says Hoffman, “we have achieved three of our four goals.”

It is now legal for a woman to wear a tallit at the Western Wall, she says, though, she adds, “It’s no picnic.” Last month, an opponent of Women of the Wall threw a cup of hot coffee at Hoffman during the prayers, staining her tallit.

Several years ago, Hoffman also spent a night in jail for reciting the Shema Yisrael prayer aloud at the Wall before the law was changed. “I was in a cell with a woman accused of soliciting for prostitution, another woman who was the fifth wife of cult leader Daniel Ambash, and a car thief. My challenge was to explain to my cellmates what I was in for.”

Women of the Wall was granted the right to read the Torah in a 2014 Supreme Court ruling. Still, Hoffman explains, as a practical matter, it is almost impossible because of a 2010 law that prohibits anyone – man or woman – from entering the Western Wall Plaza with a Torah scroll. The only Torah scrolls in the area are the 100 or so on the men’s side of the plaza, and Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall, will not provide a Torah for the women’s prayer group.

“When we come to the wall every month,” says Hoffman, “there are police barricades all the way to the security gate. These are not usual. This is just on Rosh Hodesh, and they check every woman physically. They are not looking for a bomb or a knife. They are looking for a Torah scroll.”

Last month, Rabbi Gilad Kariv, newly elected Knesset member from Labor, used his parliamentary immunity to bring in the Torah scroll that was used for their service.

Hoffman acknowledges that Women of the Wall attracts attention. “We are very visual. You get the visceral reaction. We are wearing colorful tallitot [prayer shawls], and we have 200 women singing together. We are very experienced in singing together, and it’s a wonderful choir of voices. You can’t ignore it.”

Yochi Rappeport, executive director of Women of the Wall, grew up in Safed in an Orthodox environment, attended religious schools, and was a member of the Bnei Akiva youth group.

“When I joined the IDF, I was exposed to a different type of Israeli society,” she says. “Some of them were religious, but in a different way than I was. I started understanding that what they have is what I was missing in my life, being a part of something bigger – being a part of my Jewish practice and being able to practice Judaism in a way that includes me – meaning, going to synagogue and actually leading and participating and not just sitting on the bench and praying silently. That’s how I started getting involved in liberal Judaism. I still consider myself Modern Orthodox.”

In her view, the Western Wall is both a religious site where people pray and a national site. “When we talk about Jerusalem, the city that unites everyone together, the Kotel is the site that’s supposed to allow all of us to feel at home. It’s not a synagogue. It’s much more than that.”

In January 2016, the Israeli government approved a plan by which a non-Orthodox prayer area for men and women would be expanded at the southern part of the Western Wall. According to the plan, known as the Kotel Agreement, access to this area was to be from the main entrance to the Wall, and the site was to be run by a council composed of representatives from non-Orthodox denominations and members of Women of the Wall. Women of the Wall accepted this plan.

Says Rappeport, “The best solution, even though it is a compromise for us, is the Kotel Agreement. We understand that there are so many women who don’t want us at the women’s section. We understand that it hurts them to see us pray that way, and it scares them to see us praying in a different way.”

 

However, under pressure from the haredi parties, the government backtracked from the plan in June 2017.

“The reason that the ultra-Orthodox community was against the Kotel agreement in 2016,” says Rappeport, “and the reason they will not allow the plan to move forward, is because they are afraid of the liberal lifestyle of Judaism – and I am not just talking about the Reform and Conservative, because Women of the Wall is Orthodox, and everything we do is according to the orthodox Halacha.

“They will not allow anything different because our struggle takes place at the Kotel, which is a place that they think belongs to them, and it’s a site where visitors from all over the world come to visit. They cannot allow the government to recognize a different way of Judaism.”

Rappeport says that the organization’s quest to pray monthly in public is significant.

“I do see the Kotel as one of the more important struggles taking place in Israel in terms of religion and state issues,” she notes, “because the Kotel is not just a religious site. It is a symbol.”

Leah Aharoni founded Women For the Wall, an organization opposed to Women of the Wall, in 2013.

“Our goal,” says Aharoni, “is to preserve the tradition of prayer at the Kotel in the spirit of Jewish unity.”

Aharoni was born in Moscow, grew up in Riverdale, New York, and made aliyah almost 30 years ago.

“We felt that the overwhelming majority of ordinary Kotel-goers,” she says, “the people who prayed there day in and day out, were not having a voice in the conversation. There is a 1,500-year prayer tradition at the Kotel, and the overwhelming majority who pray at the Kotel want to preserve this.”

Aharoni says that she does not oppose the right of people to pray in different ways. It is the location that troubles her. “At this specific religious site, there is a certain prayer tradition, just like there is at every other religious site in the world. The overwhelming majority of people who pray there want to preserve it.”

Each month, Aharoni brings hundreds of women to pray on Rosh Hodesh to counter the services lead by the Women of the Wall.

“It is a positive experience for a lot of women,” she says, “because a lot of women have been telling us that they stopped going to the Kotel because of the Women of the Wall.”

Aharoni says that efforts on the part of her organization to engage in dialogue with Women of the Wall were rebuffed.

“Before we started, we reached out to them for dialogue, and they refused. The only dialogue that has happened is that we have spoken on panels or one after the other to organizations,” says Aharoni.

Yochi Rappeport thinks that any reconciliation between Women of the Wall and Women For the Wall is unlikely. She says that the girls who come to protest Women of the Wall yell, interrupt their services, and some have kicked them in the legs. “There are a few women who turned to us and said, ‘Let’s talk.’ We’d love to sit down with anyone who disagrees with us, but we think it’s hypocritical to sit down and talk and, at the same time, lead buses of young girls to come and demonstrate against us.”

Rappeport is optimistic that the government will eventually have to apply the Kotel Plan and set up an alternate site near Robinson’s Arch. She notes that the case has been before the Supreme Court for almost two years, and the government has delayed its response. “We do know that there are parties among the negotiations for the next government that are talking about the Kotel Agreement as part of what needs to be done with state and religion. I think that something is going to happen.

“On Shavuot, we celebrate the Torah,” she says. “We all received the Torah – men and women together. Denying women their right to read Torah at the Kotel in Israel of 2021 is not something that we can live with, and that’s why we have to continue this struggle.”

Udel Bergman, a social worker and Jerusalem resident, has been coming to the Wall for the past 26 years, five times a week, to pray in the early morning hours.

Bergman, who is hassidic, is generally gone by the time that the Women of the Wall arrive for their 7 a.m. service, but she says that there have been times when she has been there during the time when the Women of the Wall are praying.

“When the Women of the Wall come, it has an effect on us,” she says. “They up the security, and they are very intrusive because they sing very loud, and then there are other people who are telling them that they should be quiet and are trying to mask their singing. It is difficult.

“Everyone is entitled to serve God the way he wants,” adds Bergman, “But I don’t agree with their idea to disturb people with their version of what God wants.”

Bergman agrees that the Western Wall is a place for everyone, but says: “You have to respect the place where you are going, and these women do not respect the place.”

She herself would not be opposed to the creation of a separate space for the Women of the Wall. “I would let them do whatever they want. Just don’t bother me.”

SHMUEL ROSNER, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, and author of #IsraeliJudaism: Portrait of a Cultural Revolution, does not consider the dispute between Women of the Wall and other groups to be a particularly significant religious battle.

Rosner says that public opinion surveys in Israel that consistently show support for the group, and that support the construction of an egalitarian area near the Western Wall are misleading.

“It is a very low priority for all political parties,” says Rosner. “It is a high priority for a small fraction of people and for Americans who were led to believe that it is a high priority for many Israelis.”

Rosner says that most Israelis sympathize with Women of the Wall because of their antipathy for the official rabbinate. “The general notion among Israelis is that whoever goes against the rabbinate is probably right, and should get credit for doing that. That is why the movement is getting support. It’s more because of the dislike of their enemies than because of the great value of what they do in the eyes of most Israelis. They support Women of the Wall the same way they support civil marriage, alternative kashrut certificates, secular cemeteries, and all other things connected to this arena of state and religious affairs.”

Despite the high level of support in opinion polls, Rosner suggests that their opposition is more committed to the cause than the general public.

“This is weak support,” says Rosner, “in the sense that their supporters would say in a poll that they support them but wouldn’t lift a finger to help them, but the other side has enough people who are willing to lift a finger or do much more than that, who are willing to come to the Western Wall and protest and pressure their political representatives to make it a priority.”

Most people who visit the Western Wall frequently, he adds, use it as a synagogue. For others, who don’t come as often, it is more of a national site. “Do you give priority to those who come there often, for which it serves as a daily routine, or do you want to make it more hospitable to the people who don’t come frequently and for which the importance of it is not as dramatic. There are two sides to this debate, and both have good arguments to make.”

In Rosner’s view, the government does not want to make a clear-cut decision and lets the issue drag on because it doesn’t view it as an urgent matter. He says it is unlikely that a government will renew the Kotel Agreement. “I don’t currently see a government that will be willing to pay the necessary price to alienate the ultra-Orthodox parties and dedicate police forces spending their time implementing the agreement. When you weigh the benefit and cost, the cost is too high for any government to think of as a worthwhile cause. Had it been hugely important to three million voters, you might find a government to implement the agreement, but right now, I don’t see it as a priority for anyone.”

Rosner thinks that the most critical religious issues today in Israel are those that affect most people’s lives. “Transportation on Shabbat is much more important, as is civil marriage. This is a niche item. Most Israelis don’t go to the Western Wall very often. Whether women are allowed to pray at the Kotel is not useful for most of them. They care about buses on Shabbat because they might use these buses. If Israelis fight for anything, it will be something that matters to them.”