JERUSALEM —
Amid outrage across the Jewish diaspora over a flurry of recent arrests of
women seeking to pray at the Western Wall with ritual garments in defiance of
Israeli law, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has asked
Natan Sharansky, the chairman
of the Jewish Agency, to study the issue and suggest ways to make the site more
accommodating to all Jews.
The
move comes after more than two decades of civil disobedience by a group called
Women of the Wall against regulations, legislation and a 2003 Israeli Supreme
Court ruling that allow for gender division at the wall, one of Judaism’s
holiest sites, and prohibit women from carrying a Torah or wearing prayer
shawls there.
Although
the movement has struggled to gain traction in Israel, where the
ultra-Orthodox retain great sway over public life, the issue has deepened a divide between the Jewish
state and Jews around the world at a time when Israel is battling international
isolation over its settlement policy. Critics, particularly
leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements in the United States, complain
that the government’s recent aggressive enforcement of restrictions at the wall
has turned a national monument into an ultra-Orthodox synagogue.
“The
prime minister thinks the Western Wall has to be a site that expresses the
unity of the Jewish people, both inside Israel and outside the state of Israel,”
Ron Dermer, Mr. Netanyahu’s senior adviser, said in an interview on Tuesday.
“He wants to preserve the unity of world Jewry. This is an important component
of Israel’s strength.”
Mr.
Sharansky, whose quasi-governmental nonprofit organization handles immigration for the state and is a
bridge between Israel and Jews around the world, said that Mr. Netanyahu asked
him on Monday to take up the matter, and that he expected to have
recommendations within a few months. He and Mr. Dermer said the agenda would
include improvements for Robinson’s Arch, a discreet area of the wall designated
for coed prayer under the court ruling, and the easing of restrictions in the
larger area known as the Western Wall plaza, along with the more sensitive
questions regarding prayer at the main site.
Mr.
Sharansky said the Jewish Agency itself stopped having ceremonies for new
immigrants in the plaza about two years ago after the Western Wall Heritage
Foundation, which controls the site, said that men and women could not sit
together. Under pressure from the international groups that provide its
financing, the agency passed a resolution on Oct. 30 calling for a
“satisfactory approach to the issue of prayer at the Western Wall.”
Asked
whether he could imagine a day when women could wear prayer shawls and read a
Torah at the wall itself, Mr. Sharansky said, “I imagine very easily a
situation where everybody will have their opportunity to express their
solidarity with Judaism and the Jewish people and the state of Israel in a way
he or she wants, without undermining the other.”
“That’s
as much as I want to say at this moment,” he added. “Now I have to share this
vision with the appropriate bodies.”
Mr.
Sharansky, a former Soviet dissident and widely respected figure, has been
called upon before to broker peace with the diaspora over questions of
religious pluralism, most recently during a harsh fight over conversion. Anat
Hoffman, the chairwoman of Women of the Wall, reacted with cautious optimism to
Mr. Netanyahu’s initiative, but said it would not stop the Israel Religious
Action Center, of which she is executive director, from filing a Supreme Court
petition as soon as next week challenging the makeup of the heritage
foundation’s board.
“It’s
a good thing that after 24 years the highest echelons in Israel are actually
paying attention to this rift that is breaking diaspora Jews from Israel,” she
said. “The table that should run the Western Wall should have everyone who has
an interest in the wall sitting around it.”
Rabbi
Shmuel Rabinowitz, the head of the heritage foundation, said in an e-mailed
statement that he was unaware of the Sharansky initiative and therefore “does
not have an opinion about it.”
While
Ms. Hoffman said the women’s group would be satisfied if it were allowed to
pray at the wall once a month with full regalia, her religious action center
wants hours each day, between scheduled prayer times, when the gender partition
is removed and people can freely enjoy the site as a cultural monument.
“If
in the end what happens is that the Robinson’s Arch area will be run by the
Jewish Agency instead of the antiquities department, then we’re talking about
who’s going to take care of the air-conditioning in the back of the bus,” she
said. “I don’t care about that. I don’t want to sit in the back of the bus. I
want to dismantle the Western Wall Heritage Foundation.”
Abraham
H. Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he discussed the
wall and other questions of religious pluralism with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem
on Monday.
“This
is a wise initiative, but it’s only a beginning,” Mr. Foxman said.