Natan Sharansky Vows Women Won’t Be Charged for Kaddish at Western Wall
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Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky met Thursday with Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, chairman of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, to express his shock at a letter sent by police warning that women would be arrested for reciting the Kaddish mourner’s prayer at the Western Wall.
“The Kotel must continue to be a symbol of unity for all Jews in the world and not a symbol of strife and discord,” Sharansky told Rabinowitz.
Rabinowitz, whose organization oversees the Western Wall, assured Sharansky in their conversation that no women would be arrested for reciting Kaddish at the Western Wall.
The letter warning women that they were prohibited from reciting the Kaddish was sent by Jerusalem Police Chief Yossi Pariente to Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of Women of the Wall, the organization that holds a monthly prayer service at the wall.
Sharansky is in the final stages of drafting recommendations for a compromise to resolve growing tensions over prayer at the wall. The recommendations, his office said, are meant to ensure “that every Jew in the world can pray in the manner that they are accustomed to at Judaism’s most important national and religious site.”
For more, go to Haaretz
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