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July 30, 1999/17 Av 5759, Vol. 51, No.43
Western Wall issues test Barak government
AVI MACHLIS
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
JERUSALEM - Relations among the streams of Judaism may not be high on Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak's priority list, but some government officials are addressing issues that have strained Israel-Diaspora relations in recent years.
Yitzhak Herzog, Israel's new Cabinet secretary, will ask the government to establish a committee to address issues related to religious pluralism, including conversion.
The government also took a step toward allowing egalitarian services at the Western Wall. For the first time, the government officially recognized the right of non-Orthodox streams of Judaism to pray at a section of the wall known as Robinson's Arch that is near but separate from the main prayer plaza. Details were expected to be ironed out in a meeting this week among Herzog, Conservative leaders and representatives from the Religious Affairs Ministry.
Reform and Conservative leaders, who were pessimistic that any progress would be made on pluralism after the fervently Orthodox Shas Party was included in the government, are now more upbeat. "We are encouraged by the serious and warm attitude of senior government officials," said Rabbi Ehud Bandel, president of Masorti, the Conservative movement in Israel.
But the optimism may be premature. Some government officials are already backtracking from their apparent change of position regarding services at the Western Wall.
The momentum started on Wednesday, July 21, the eve of Tisha b'Av, the annual fast day marking the destruction of the Temple - which, according to tradition, happened because of Jewish infighting. In recent years, small egalitarian services on Tisha b'Av at the Western Wall, held far from the main prayer plaza, had sparked violent protests by fervently Orthodox Jews. Although there were no problems reported during the holiday this year, there were clashes between secular and fervently Orthodox Jews on the preceding Shabbat.
Two days before this year's observance, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's new public security minister, asked Conservative and Reform leaders to hold their services at the Robinson's Arch area, which is only about 100 feet away from the main prayer plaza but beyond the line of vision of Orthodox Jewish worshipers.
Rabbi Uri Regev, director of the Reform movement's religious action center, agreed. "It has been my view for quite some time now that Robinson's Arch is an acceptable compromise to allow our people to hold services at the wall and avoid confrontation," Regev said.
In contrast, the Conservative movement rejected the solution, saying that it would not forgo a fundamental right to pray at the main plaza. "The issue is not whether the stones are sacred," Bandel said. "It is the fact that generations of Jews stood at that place and wept tears of prayer."
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