This is the Forward’s coverage of the Western Wall, also called the Kotel, a Jewish holy site in Jerusalem adjacent to the Temple Mount.
Western Wall
The Latest
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Fast Forward Jerusalem Chief Rabbi: Western Wall Deal Will ‘Weaken’ City
Israel’s former Sephardic chief rabbi said that a landmark compromise establishing a mixed-gender prayer space at the Western Wall will “weaken Jerusalem.” Speaking on Sunday, Shlomo Amar, who is currently the Sephardic chief rabbi of Jerusalem, also referred to the liberal Jewish proponents of expanding non-Orthodox worship space at Judaism’s holiest site as “wicked,” the…
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Opinion 5 Things We Can Do About the Western Wall Impasse — and One We Shouldn’t
Now that the long-awaited plan to create a proper egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall has been put on hold, again, here are five actions that American Jewish leaders can take — and one course of action that they should not, under any circumstances, follow. Option 1: Lay low. This is the Israeli option….
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Israel News Benjamin Netanyahu Says He’ll Keep His Promise, Orders New Prayer Podium for Western Wall
The Israeli government will order a permanent bimah, the elevated platform on which a prayer leader stands, to be built in the southern section of the Western Wall holy site as a signal to American and Israeli non-Orthodox movements that it is serious about implementing its plan for an egalitarian prayer space there. The gesture…
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News Can American Jews Rescue Western Wall Prayer Deal?
The deadline for resolving the crisis over the new egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall in Jerusalem has been extended indefinitely, after an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to draft a solution acceptable to the opposing sides within the 60 days he was allotted. Meanwhile, leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements…
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Israel News As Western Wall Deadline Approaches, Prayer Activists Fight for Face Time with Government
Since Haredi threats to break with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau’s goernment torpedoed a plan for an egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall about two months ago, the Israeli government has been trying to craft a compromise deal that will satisfy both sides before a June 1 deadline. But so far government representatives have…
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Life Netanyahu Appoints Western Wall Deal Negotiator to New Post
TEL AVIV — David Sharan, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s U.S.-born chief of staff, who is heading negotiations on an egalitarian Western Wall plaza, will be the Israeli Cabinet’s next secretary. In April, Netanyahu tapped Sharan to run reopened discussion on an agreement to expand the non-Orthodox prayer platform at the Western Wall, allowing progressive…
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Opinion American Jewish Unity In Favor of Egalitarian Kotel Is a Fiction
It might be hard to imagine the hardline Israeli Haredi parties and the hardline feminist “Original Women of the Wall” group as occupying the same library, much less the same page. But that’s where they find themselves. It’s not just that both are hardline, and that both reject the compromise idea of an egalitarian Western…
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Opinion Why Israel’s Two-Kotel Solution Reminds Me of Two-State Solution
When the Israeli cabinet approved a proposal intended to resolve a festering conflict between Orthodox and non-Orthodox Jews at the Western Wall, no one seemed to notice the parallels between this “two-wall solution” and the “two-state solution” that many leaders have proposed to resolve the long-simmering conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Both of these “solutions”…
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