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June 16, 2000/13 Sivan I 5760, Vol. 52, No.41
Prayer dispute has meaning for Valley observers
BARRY COHEN
Community Editor
Whose Wall is it, anyway?
Along with the ultra-Orthodox and the proponents of the Women of the Wall (WOW), some Valley residents express strong opinions about the current struggle over how women may pray at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
According to ultra-Orthodox Jews who frequent the Wall, tradition is clear. Only men can organize a worship service, pray out loud and read from the Torah.
Additionally, it is an offense to their religious sensibilities, according to Rabbi Bonnie Kop-pell of Temple Beth Sholom, a Conservative congregation in Chandler. At the Wall, it's just not done that way, she adds.
"There is a protocol that has been followed for thousands of years, which has existed in the religious community, in terms of what is sacred and eternal," says Linda Cucher, of Young Israel of Phoenix. Shouldn't anyone who prays at the Wall be sensitive to tradition? she asks.
The Western Wall is the retaining wall of the Second Temple, which was destroyed in 70 C.E. Considered by many to be Judaism's holiest site, in recent times it has been accessible to Jews (and other faiths) only since 1967, when Israel regained possession of the Old City of Jerusalem from the Jordanians, who had occupied the city, and controlled access to the wall, following Israel's 1948 War of Independence.
Since December 1998, the Women of the Wall have gathered periodically to pray aloud together at the Wall. In response, the Israeli Ministry of Religion acted to criminalize the sound of women's voices there.
But last month, the High Court of Justice ruled that women may pray at the Wall as they wish. In response to that ruling, representatives of three religious parties, United Torah Judaism, Shas and the National Religious Party, as well as members from other parties, introduced a bill in the Knesset that would punish any woman who reads from the Torah at the Western Wall with a seven-year jail sentence.
"The only place we (Jewish women) do not have religious freedom is Jerusalem," says Seema Liston, a Valley resident who is a national board member of Hadassah. Liston was at the Wall five years ago, when ultra-Orthodox protestors violently opposed a group of women gathering to pray at the Wall.
"They (the ultra-Orthodox) have a right to believe as they wish, but the Wall does not belong to them," says Barbara Mark Dreyfuss, a Reform Jew who is a member of Temple Chai.
A great deal more than a mehitzah, the partition separating men and women, divides the two sides. The supporters and objectors are also divided by the criteria they use to ground their arguments.
Further complicating the situation is defining the line between civil law and religious law, which in the United States is seen as a sturdy barrier but in Israel more closely resembles a porous fence.
Rabbi Chaim Silver of Young Israel of Phoenix, says an overlooked point is that women's praying aloud at the Wall is still illegal according to civil law. "If you have a problem, change the law. Do not break the law," he said.
The Supreme Court's ruling allowing women to pray at the Wall as they wish does not become civil law until it is passed by the Knesset.
According to Valley resident Ellen Friedman, the idea of criminalizing organized women's worship is "absurd."
"People should be entitled to experiment and experience all traditions of Judaism," she says.
Friedman is an active Temple Chai member.
"Prohibiting women from praying in their own way, if they are being respectful, is ridiculous," says Helen Kriegsfeld, a Reform Jew and member of Temple Beth Israel. She adds that the latest law presented in the Knesset will only generate more antagonism towards the ultra-Orthodox.
Kriegsfeld believes Israel's first priority is not the Wall, but the safety and security of the nation. This infighting "tears the Jewish people apart as a nation, when we should have cohesion, tolerance and compassion," she says.
Kriegsfeld, who holds dual citizenship, has children and grandchildren in Israel and visits there often.
American Jews' support for or condemnation of the women's efforts depends largely on the observer's views of Jewish tradition, Israeli civil and religious law, and on his or her personal view of God.
"I do not think that God meant for us to be so divisive. Religion should hold us together, not tear us apart," says Joan Zuckerman, with Parents of North American Israelis. She, like Kriegsfeld, has children - two daughters and three grandchildren - in Israel and visits there as often as she can.
"This is definitely not walking humbly with their God," says Dreyfuss of the ultra-Orthodox. She adds that they are being "inflexible, narrow-minded," and are only succeeding in "making enemies."
But Silver maintains that the Women of the Wall, not the ultra-Orthodox, are being divisive.
"Who is crashing whose party?" he asks.
A status quo has existed for hundreds of years, he explains, and suddenly WOW and its supporters are calling the ultra-Orthodox divisive because they will not accept WOW's opinion.
Another source of division appears to be a lack of sensitivity between the sides to each other's religious needs.
"If (women) choose to hold a Torah service, (they should) hold it in a place where it is accepted as the norm for women to do so," says Cucher. "It is not the norm at the Wall."
"Women have to be sensitive to the needs of Orthodox men and do their service at the far side of their section." Zuckerman says. The goal, she says, is to contain the sound, so that men will not be offended by kol isha, the woman's voice.
Friedman points out that WOW has a number of choices of where to pray: any place on the wide expanse of the Western Wall plaza, at the entrance of the women's side, at the extreme corner or at the base of the Wall itself.
At issue may be whose religious sensitivities are primary.
"They (ultra-Orthodox men) have no right to dictate how women of the world are to be treated," says Dreyfuss. She says that if she visited the Wall, she "would have fear in (her) heart rather than joy and ecstasy."
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