‘You here have made a difference’

By Marshall Weiss, The Dayton Jewish Observer

Each month, Women of the Wall Executive Director Lesley Sachs says she must think of a new, creative way to smuggle a Torah scroll into the women’s section at the Western Wall — Judaism’s holiest site — in Jerusalem.

“Last month, we used a baby carriage,” she told a gathering at Dayton’s Temple Israel on the evening of April 13. “But this is not the way it should be.”

For 27 years, Women of the Wall has come together in the women’s section at the Kotel (Western Wall) for a service at the beginning of each Jewish month with the aim of securing four rights there: to wear prayer shawls, pray out loud, wear tefillin, and read from the Torah.

These prohibitions for women stem from Israel’s operation of the Kotel under the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, part of the haredi Orthodox religious establishment.

In 2013, a district court ruled that Women of the Wall is free to express those four rights in the women’s section, since the government of Israel had not created an alternative place for them to pray.

Even so, a legal loophole allows the Heritage Foundation to prohibit the women access to Torahs for their readings at the Wall.

“But that ruling of that judge, together with tremendous pressure from people here, women and men in America who are saying this is unacceptable, (and) with this mounting pressure on (Prime Minister) Netanyahu, he decides to do something that’s never been done before,” Sachs says in her update.

Three years ago, Netanyahu brought together representatives of the Reform and Conservative movements, the Heritage Foundation, Women of the Wall, Jewish Agency, and Jewish Federations of North America to expand an egalitarian section of the Wall at Robinson’s Arch.

In January, the Knesset approved this compromise agreement, which would bring the Women of the Wall to a new egalitarian plaza, and would also include divided space for modern Orthodox women to conduct their own prayer services.

But on April 3, Israel’s supreme court gave the government an additional three months to reevaluate the egalitarian prayer plan for the Wall.

“Immediately after the (Knesset) vote, the ultra-Orthodox (haredi) started a huge battle against the Reform movement, the Conservative movement and this agreement,” Sachs says. “Netanyahu is trying to buy time now. He set up another committee to try and work out the differences in 60 days. And Natan Sharansky, the head of the Jewish Agency; Jerry Silverman, the head of the (Jewish) federations; Rick Jacobs, the head of the Reform movement; and Julie Schonfeld, the head of the Conservative movement; are standing strong behind this agreement. We are saying: Prime Minister Netanyahu, you made a promise. Your government voted on it. We demand that this happen. We want our place at the Kotel.”

According to Sachs, the plan for the egalitarian plaza calls for the government to fund its construction, operations, and maintenance; for representatives from Women of the Wall, and the Reform and Masorti (Conservative) movements in Israel to oversee its operations; and for the plaza to be in plain sight of visitors to the Kotel.

She says the Women of the Wall board — comprising modern Orthodox, Conservative and Reform women — deliberated carefully before agreeing to join Netanyahu’s negotiations in 2013.

“We decided to enter negotiations for a new plaza for two main reasons: The first was, if it hadn’t been brought (to us), the government of Israel would have made that (egalitarian) section, but not at all what we would have wanted, and of course they would have sent us there.

“The second reason we joined was that we are feminists, and we believe that if there is an alternative section that is dignified, the ultra-Orthodox women — who don’t want us — have the right to pray without us.”

Sachs adds that when the Women of the Wall board voted to join the negotiations, two board members voted against it. One accepted the majority vote, the other left and said she would fight it all the way.

Should the agreement get back on track, Sachs estimates it will take up to two-and-a-half years to complete the egalitarian plaza construction.

“Until it’s finished, we are not moving. We are in the women’s section, all of us. They should be wanting to get rid of us soon.”

As much as the Women of the Wall issue elicits strong reactions among American Jews, it barely registers on the radar for Israeli Jews. According to a survey released April 13 by Hiddush — an Israeli organization that aims to advance religious pluralism — only three percent of Israeli Jewish respondents see the debate over prayer arrangements at the Kotel as their most important religious priority.

Even so, Sachs cites the support among Israel’s modern Orthodox and secular women.

“Modern Orthodox women are finding their halachic (Jewish legal) groundings. They want to assume a more central place in their community,” she says. “And they read Torah in women’s groups. They say that we are strengthening them. And then you have secular women who are, maybe, feminists. They are just appalled at the way we are treated. They see us as women who are fighting against excluding women in a public place. Feminism in Israel came from North America. We didn’t know anything.”

“I need to say strongly that you here have made a difference,” she says. “The (former) ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, told Anat Hoffman, our chairperson, and myself that he approached Benjamin Netanyahu in 2013 when he made that decision to sit with us.”

Sachs says Oren told Netanyahu that the prime minister was losing North American Jewry over the issue of Women of the Wall.

“It’s coming from here, that important lesson on gender equality, on freedom of religion,” Sachs says. “It is such a gift that you are bestowing on us, this wonderful thing that is happening in Israeli democracy and religion. Thanks to you.”

To read the complete May 2016 Dayton Jewish Observer, click here.