The new plan to create a larger, official egalitarian space at the Western Wall is a compromise of a compromise. In all the celebration, we can’t lose sight of that. Those who believe in promoting and protecting pluralistic Judaism in Israel have every right to proclaim victory — a rare emotion after years of increasingly…
Reading the substance of the new Western Wall deal, described in a news report posted by the Forward as a is heartbreaking. As Shulamit Magnus rightly argues in the Jerusalem Post, the Kotel is not now, nor has it ever been, a synagogue. Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz is not the Wall’s mara de’atra (“master of the…
JERUSALEM — Israel’s tourism minister said Chelsea Clinton’s wedding to a Jewish man, in which a rabbi officiated with a priest, shows how assimilated Reform Jews are in the United States. Yariv Levin of the Likud party made the comment Sunday during a discussion of the agreement approved by the Cabinet creating a dedicated space…
When I woke to the news about the new policy for the Kotel, I was surprised to see so many of my friends celebrating. I suppose I should be, too: I’ve been wearing tefillin since I was bat mitzvahed over a decade ago. In that time, I have been to Israel twice, first with my…
Some of the loudest cheering for Sunday’s historic deal to create an egalitarian prayer space at Judaism’s holiest site, the Western Wall, came from 7,000 miles away. Reform and Conservative leaders in America called it the Israeli government’s first serious step to honor religious plurality in Israel, where the ultra Orthodox largely control Jewish expression…
JERUSALEM — A chorus of non-Orthodox and Diaspora leaders praised the landmark interdenominational compromise on the Western Wall. The compromise will expand the wall’s egalitarian section and place it under the authority of a pluralist committee, while solidifying haredi Orthodox control over the site’s traditional, Orthodox section. Women of the Wall, the women’s prayer group…
Women of the Wall succeeded in lighting candles for Hanukkah at the Western Wall even after the rabbi who administers the sacred site defied an official order and refused to include women in the main Menorah-lighting ceremony on the first night of Hanukkah. Video posted by activists from Women of the Wall shows Kotel security…
A Hanukkah near-miracle reminds us of feminist divisions The quarter-century-old feminist prayer group Women of the Wall was on the receiving end of its very own Hanukkah near-miracle this week, when Israel’s attorney general’s office ordered the Kotel rabbi to include women in the state’s official Hanukkah ceremony. Women of the Wall launched a campaign…
