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WOMEN OF THE WALL WAIL OVER NEW PRAYER SITE
by Hilary Leila Kreiger and Dan Izenberg
Jerusalem Post, Oct. 31, 2003
Leaders of the Women of the Wall on Thursday blasted the NIS 1.7 million plan the government unveiled this week for the conversion of Robinson's Arch into an alternative prayer site adjacent to the Western Wall.
At the same time, the proposal pleased officials in the Masorti (Conservative) Movement, which uses the site and will benefit from the improvements.
An expanded plaza allowing worshipers to touch the Wall, a wheelchair-accessible walkway, and storage space for Torahs and prayer books attempt to create an appropriate prayer space.
On April 6, the High Court of Justice gave the government one year to provide such a site; otherwise, WOW would be allowed to pray at the Wall as they wish despite vociferous Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox opposition.
"The fact that there's so much public expense to get us out of sight and out of mind is so sad," said former Jerusalem city councilor Anat Hoffman, a member of the halachic and pluralistic women's prayer group. "I can save the people NIS 1.7 million in one second. Let's share the women's section of the Wall."
"I feel like they're just trying to buy us off," WOW board member Haviva Ner-David said, pointing out that the group never asked for an alternative site and will likely continue to hold morning Rosh Hodesh services at the Wall. She said the group might decide to move their Torah readings – now prohibited from the main plaza because of violence they have sparked – from their current location in the Jewish Quarter to the new area.
The designated space sits at the far end of the archeological garden along the southwestern side of the Wall, south of the main plaza.
The Masorti Movement has for three years been praying in the heart of the garden, which runs along the Herodian road and also serves as an archeological and tourist site. They agreed to move their egalitarian services from the main plaza to the garden after encountering opposition similar to that faced by WOW.
Masorti leaders, coincidental beneficiaries of the government initiative, joined WOW members at Tuesday's meeting where cabinet secretary Yisrael Maimon released architect Michael Turner's plans.
"It's beautiful," said Masorti Movement president Rabbi Ehud Bandel of the new design, particularly the path leading through the garden to the prayer space. "They did a fine job maintaining access to the prayer site and maintaining the site as an archeological garden."
That balance is something the Antiquities Authority and the planners working under the agency worked hard to strike, according to Jerusalem District Archeologist Jon Seligman.
He noted that though the Antiquities Authority originally objected to "the use of the area for prayer and the change in the nature of the space, we are required to fulfill the requirement of the Supreme Court."
He said preparations for the alternative site began a couple of weeks after the ruling, with the preliminary plans and budget approved in the last few months.
Bandel said that his movement would prefer to hold their services on the main plaza and supports the rights of WOW to do so as well. But he called the government's willingness to invest in preparing a site for egalitarian and women's prayer at the Western Wall "a positive step forward towards religious freedom and pluralism and respect for all streams of Judaism."
Hoffman viewed the move differently. "Now we're going to be praying at an archeological site, at an alternative site for the Jews of a lesser degree."
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