The Women of the Wall must be one of the most offensively misnamed groups in history. They don’t represent the Wall, they don’t represent the vast majority of the women who pray there, and they don’t represent sincere prayer.
As she was led off by police, their director, Lesley Sachs, was caught on video shouting out: “to all women from all denominations, there is more than one way to be a Jew!” Her actions were never about joining the others in prayer, but about disrupting them.
MK Michal Rozin said it best: “It’s not a religious issue, it’s a political issue.” Of course, it’s a religious site, and thus the first question should have been whether or not it is appropriate to stage a political protest in a place where others are accustomed to praying in peace.
This is why the proposal from Natan Sharansky, much as it is being celebrated in the press, is actually drawing a more positive reaction from Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz than from the group. According to the Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Rabinowitz said that he will not oppose the plan “for the sake of unity and out of a desire to distance the Western Wall from all argument and dispute” — but meanwhile, the Women of the Wall group has announced “that it would find any solution in which the group be forced to pray separately from the main plaza unacceptable.” One side is interested in letting Orthodox Jews pray in peace. The other … wants the very opposite.
In reality, there is nothing new or revolutionary about the proposal, from Natan Sharansky, to expand the Robinson’s Arch area. That revolution, if it could ever have been called that, came a decade ago, when the Israel Supreme Court acknowledged both the right of the overwhelming majority to pray according to Orthodox norms, as well as the right of others to do as they wish — and required that a space be provided for them at Robinson’s Arch — and the Conservative movement said yes. You wouldn’t know it reading the articles today, which talk about how liberal movements are taking the bold step of accepting this amazing compromise, but there’s nothing new about it. The conservatives accepted it 10 years ago, and were complaining about fees for access three years later (and I said, at the time, that justice was with them in that complaint).
The reason why the so-called “Women of the Wall” found that solution unacceptable is because they are not trying to observe their own practices, but change Orthodox ones. Let’s be honest, their chairwoman, Anat Hoffman, has never expressed interest in any form of prayer, except when it’s interfering with those of others. While she was still a member of the Knesset (with the rabidly anti-religious Meretz party) in the early 1990’s, she stated quite clearly that “if it weren’t for the media, I would find no reason to be here.” As the executive director of IRAC, she continues to fritter away Reform Jewish dollars for causes having nothing to do with Reform Judaism. As I wrote about their “news” section a few years back, “Articles about Reform, even adding a collection of one-sided portrayals of the ‘Women of the Wall,’ are vastly outnumbered by articles about their opposition to voluntary gender separation on buses, demonstrations against Orthodox Rabbis, interference with Charedi education and unsavory comparisons between Rabbis and Imams.”
But for the record, I do see a bright side. If the Sharansky plan is actually implemented, this tremendous waste of money will provide ongoing, daily evidence of the unpopularity of liberal Jewish streams in Israel. That section of the Kotel Plaza will be used by the IDF for induction ceremonies, on Friday nights by mixed groups on tours of Israel, for Conservative Jews who can’t even fill the small current space, the occasional mixed Bar (or Bat) Mitzvah, and the Women of the Wall. And in total it will see roughly 2% of the traffic of those streaming to pray at the site of S’rid Beis Kodsheynu, l’hispallel sheyibaneh bimheyrah b’yameinu.