Israel’s 'two wall' solution may be no solution at all

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Members of the Reform Jewish and the Conservative Jewish movements are rejoicing this week following a decision by the Israeli cabinet to permit a prayer space for mixed-gender religious ceremonies and non-Orthodox Jews at the southern end of one of Judaism's holiest sites – the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem.

But the celebrations over this southern wall may be premature. Many non-Orthodox Jews object to what they consider to be the second-rate location of this prayer site, while some modern Orthodox women aren't happy with having to move their prayer groups to this new venue. Their outcry, along with that of Israel's powerful ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) community, which views Reform and Conservative Jews as heretical, and the condemnation from Jerusalem's Muslim leaders, who want no changes to holy sites in the Old City, could well quash the project.

In Israel it's known simply as the Kotel (meaning "wall"), with a capital K. But it's not just any wall. This remarkably true and towering bulwark constructed of enormous chiseled stones is the western retaining wall of the expanded Temple Mount built by King Herod 2,000 years ago. Since the year 70 CE, when the temple was destroyed by the Romans, it is pretty well all that remained intact of the holy Jewish site.

This Western Wall is where Jews have long gone to pray. Many who visit the site write out their prayers on small pieces of paper and press them between the huge stacked stones, the better to reach the Holy of Holies believed to be on the other side of the wall, beneath the Muslims' golden Dome of the Rock.

While Orthodox Jewish tradition holds that men alone should be the leaders of prayer, reports through the ages indicate that women were permitted to pray individually at the Kotel without any separation from men – until the 20th century, when efforts arose to keep the sexes apart. Following Israel's creation in 1948 and its capture of the Old City in 1967, when control over the Western Wall, like that of other religious institutions, was handed over to the Haredi leadership, a partition has separated men and women.

In addition, Israel's religious leaders have insisted that women, even in their own area of prayer, must not wear the prayer shawl and phylacteries worn by men, nor touch a Torah, nor lead in prayer. This prohibition has led to great tension between those women who wish to pray in these ways and the Haredim who consider such behaviour sacrilegious. At times, women have been arrested for donning such gear, and the courts have urged the government to find a solution.

At the same time, Reform and Conservative Jews – much more numerous in the diaspora than in Israel – have sought a place where men and women could pray together at the Kotel.

A solution, credited to former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, now head of the Jewish Agency that encourages and integrates Jewish immigrants to Israel, was to designate the relatively unknown and lightly used southern end of the Western Wall for all these non-Orthodox practices.

Since 2000, a small informal space for egalitarian prayer has existed in this area, and thousands of B'nai Mitzvah and B'no Mitzvah have been conducted there, mostly for visiting Jews seeking an egalitarian service.

After several years of negotiation, the plan to greatly expand this area, part of a large ongoing archeological site, was agreed on by some of the interested parties and passed by the Benjamin Netanyahu cabinet on Sunday.

The Haredi leadership likes the plan because it puts all the non-conformists in one basket; the non-Orthodox communities like it because it accords them a level of public recognition that they too are real Jews, and Mr. Netanyahu likes it because it supposedly makes everybody happy.

But this is not an altogether happy conclusion.

For one thing, while this new site is still part of Herod's western retaining wall, it is separated from the popular Kotel by some distance and by a large ramp to the Temple Mount area, known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary with its 1,300-year-old Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque.

The distance puts this egalitarian prayer area that much further from the Holy of Holies and right under the women's section of al-Aqsa Mosque. Being on the other side of the ramp also gives the place a very different feeling.

This new area has never been widely used as a place of devotion and prayer. I've attended a Bat Mitzvah ceremony at the site and, while beautiful and special for the family involved, the place felt more like the archeological dig it is than a place of reverence.

There are many Jews who view this placement as being cast out rather than recognized as equal to Orthodox Jews.

There's another problem with this plan.

While those people seeking a mixed-gender facility may be somewhat pleased, a lot of modern Orthodox women are not happy at all. Many of them have sought a place at the main Western Wall where they can don the trappings of prayer utilized by men and be treated as equals in their own section. With Sunday's agreement, once the new site is ready, these women will again be forbidden to do these things at the old Western Wall; only in the new area will they be allowed to do so, the rabbi of the Kotel insists.

And if that happens and these Orthodox women want to pray separate from men at the southern wall, the agreement allows for the group to erect a portable barrier to separate the sexes.

Of course, it may not happen at all. The Islamic Mufti of Jerusalem has condemned the whole plan, claiming the wall and the ground beside it belong to the Islamic Wakf – an arguable point – and no change can be made, he says, without the approval of Islamic religious leaders and of Jordan, whose special ties to the religious sites of the Old City are recognized in the 1994 treaty between Israel and Jordan.

Plus ça change.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article did not include the fact that Israel did not control the Western Wall until 1967. This version has been corrected.