Feminists and Ultra-Orthodox Clash at Western Wall Prayers

Jerusalem (TPS) – The Western Wall, the holiest spot for Jews to pray, was swamped by dueling crowds numbering in the hundreds on Thursday: one, a group of feminist Jews protesting hurdles in a planned egalitarian prayer space at the site; the other, ultra-Orthodox Jews who answered the call of rabbis to counter-protest and to disrupt the egalitarian prayers.

“You are worse than all the terrorists! You’re the biggest enemies of Israel!” a young ultra-Orthodox man shouted at the liberal group before heading to the Wall to pray.

Meanwhile, the competing demonstrators each sang their religious songs, sparred over Jewish texts in both Hebrew and English, and broke into spirited hora dances that were periodically infiltrated and overtaken by unruly opponents.

Stirring all the passions is the government’s compromise plan to designate a section at the Western Wall for mixed-gender prayer – a central demand of the group of liberal activists Women of the Wall – in contravention of the typical Orthodox practice enforced at the Wall insisting that men and women pray separately.

Beyond the niceties of proper prayer etiquette, however, the issue exposes the stark divides that separate the Orthodox from the more liberal Reform and Conservative Jewish movements, as well as the rifts between Israel – in which the Orthodox rabbinate is largely accepted as a religious authority – and the diaspora, particularly the United States, where non-Orthodox movements comprise the vast majority of Jews.

Yet the plan for a new egalitarian zone has since become bogged down in Israeli politics, and an egalitarian service at the Wall on Tuesday was disrupted by Rabbi Shlomo Amar, a former Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel, who denounced the liberal prayer group and instructed his followers to plant a partition separating men from women.

Rabbi Diana Villa, an Argentine émigrée who teaches Jewish Law in Jerusalem, said that Amar’s stunt prompted the Women of the Wall and their sympathizers to hold a protest service on Thursday.

“I’m not part of the Women of the Wall and generally don’t feel the need to go to a place and be provocative,” Villa told Tazpit Press Service (TPS), “but [Amar] really went too far. So I’m here to protest that and the fact that the government is dragging its feet.”

Rabbi Nathalie Lastreger, an activist with Women of the Wall who comes from an ultra-Orthodox Parisian family, said that the egalitarian service was a matter of dignity.

“It is very important to be able to be here without any partition [between men and women], without any difference, and feel not invisible,” she told TPS.

Nevertheless, the mixed-gender prayer group is considered outrageous – and immodest – to the ultra-Orthodox protestors.

“This is holiest place according to all the religions and it’s a disgrace that the women come here dressed like that, immodestly. They are here just to be against the Torah,” said Elimelech Koenigsberg, a Talmud student from Jerusalem. “I’m here because the rabbis said to protest and because I have a soft spot in my heart for the Western Wall.”

Yechiel Schlesinger, from the ultra-Orthodox community of Beitar, said he happened upon the scene by accident but stayed to protest.

“What bothers me is the group called Reform Jews – they have no place in Judaism,” Schlesinger told TPS. “They ‘reformed’ the Torah, changing whatever they pleased, and now they want to create ‘reform’ here [at the Western Wall] too, and that’s not going to happen.”

Indeed, Reform Jews seemed to draw a particularly harsh backlash.

Rabbi Nir Barkin, a Reform rabbi in the central Israeli city of Modi’in, was berated by an ultra-Orthodox man who identified himself only as Moishe from England.

“Do you eat pork, rabbi? Do you keep the Sabbath? Come on, rabbi,” Moishe taunted. “I’m Jewish more than you are. Are you circumcised?”

Barkin attempted to introduce himself and extended a hand but his interlocutor refused to shake it.

“I think those who protest us are doing a wonderful service to the progressive movements by making all this provocation and commotion,” Barkin told TPS. “If not for them, there wouldn’t be all this media here and we wouldn’t have come this far. We have no choice but to fight against the ultra-Orthodox takeover of the site and their attempt to create a theocratic hegemony.”

As Barkin was speaking, an Orthodox man, apparently misled by the kippa on his head, mistook him for a fellow anti-egalitarian protestor.

“Look, they’re singing Am Yisrael Chai (‘The People of Israel Lives’) but they’re slaughtering Israel!” the man remarked with a chuckle, referring to the popular song the liberal group was singing. Barkin shrugged off the confusion.

“You see? That’s the beauty of it all,” he said. “It’s even hard to tell who is who.”