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MASORTI OBJECTS TO WALL PLAN
Movement leader dismisses idea that Orthodox
need more space to pray as "ludicrous"
by Michele Chabin - Israel Correspondent
Jewish Week, Dec. 26, 2003
Jerusalem — Sometime in November, bulldozers arrived at the Western Wall plaza and began to dig up part of the stone tiles directly behind the separate sections for male and female worshipers.
The construction job, which is taking place within a fenced-in parameter, is intended to extend the two sections, which are segregated according to Orthodox Jewish law.
Once the renovations are complete in a few months, the sections will comprise roughly half the length of the expansive plaza. They now take up about a quarter of the length.
 The Ministry of Religious Affairs, which initiated the project at the behest of the rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinovitch, insists that the renovation is motivated purely by the need for additional space.
But the Masorti movement doesn’t buy it. Israel’s branch of the Conservative movement sees the project as part of a “creeping effort” to expand the Orthodox section of the plaza, thereby squeezing the area for prayer by the non-Orthodox.
Upon discovering the renovation project, the Masorti shot off a letter to the ministry demanding that it be halted. The movement has yet to receive a formal response.
“The expansion is necessary because, thank God, we have many more worshipers at the Wall and the section delineated for prayer is just too small,” Rabbi Rabinovitch told The Jewish Week.
When a journalist pointed out that on the morning of the interview — a day when many bar mitzvahs were held at the Wall — the prayer sections were crowded but not overly so, Rabbi Rabinovitch replied, “Today was a very cold day, so it wasn’t as crowded as it is in the warmer weather.”
Rabbi Rabinovitch insisted that “during the summer, especially on Mondays and Thursdays, when there are many bar mitzvahs, the prayer section cannot accommodate everyone. This is a problem even on Rosh Chodesh.”
Rabbi Andy Sacks, the head of the Masorti movement’s rabbinical council and the person who first alerted the movement to the renovations when he discovered them early this month, dismissed Rabbi Rabinovitch’s comments.
“The notion that suddenly there is a need for a larger area is ludicrous in light of the low level of tourism and the fact that Israelis are afraid to visit the Jewish Quarter,” Rabbi Sacks said.
While stressing that his movement “has not objected to the temporary extension of the mechitza [physical separation between men and women] on Tisha b’Av, Shavuot and birkat kohanim over Sukkot, we do object to tampering with the religious status quo,” he said.
That status quo has existed since shortly after 1967, when Israeli troops liberated the Western Wall from Jordan during the Six-Day War.
The back, or upper part, of the plaza, Rabbi Sacks continued, “has always been a public area for use by the public. The custom of the Kotel going back to ’67 has been that the area is available for use by Jews and non-Jews, and by the various streams of Judaism, each according to his own custom.”
Officially, that part of the plaza is not used for prayer of any kind but rather for such official events as army induction ceremonies in which both men and women take part. However, it is not uncommon for informal, mixed groups of men and women to quietly engage in prayer there.
After enduring years of verbal and sometimes physical abuse from Orthodox worshipers at the Wall, the Masorti agreed to a government proposal that would allow the movement to conduct egalitarian prayers at Robinson’s Arch, along the southern side of the Western Wall. It is not part of the disputed plaza.
Rabbi Sacks said that since the Masorti movement’s compromise agreement with the government not to conduct prayers at the plaza itself, “there has been a creeping effort over the past two to three years to expand the Orthodox section, and this is a continuation of that attempt.”
When there were renovation efforts in the past, Rabbi Sacks said, the Masorti movement questioned their legality and the Religious Affairs Ministry backed down.
Ehud Bandel, the president of the Masorti movement, said he was waiting for the ministry’s response. If the renovations continue, he said, “we do not rule out petitioning the High Court over this matter.”
Rabbi Rabinovitch said the expansion of the male- and female-only sections “does not take away from the Reform or Conservative. We’ve already checked with the army and other parties, and have been assured that we won’t be interfering with anything.”
While the expansion will double the space designated for Orthodox-only prayer, the remaining half of the plaza is quite large. Bandel said the size of the “open” plaza is beside the point.
“When we agreed to pray at Robinson’s Arch, we made it very clear that we were not relinquishing the right of all Jews to pray at the back of the plaza,” he said. “The Kotel belongs to all the Jewish people, and the construction is an attempt to delegitimize the vast majority of Jews in the world.”
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