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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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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News Non-Orthodox Groups Threaten Fight Over Kotel If Israel Scraps Deal
TEL AVIV — The Conservative and Reform movements in Israel are considering some drastic measures as part of a planned offensive over access to the Western Wall in Jerusalem for egalitarian prayer if the government backs away from a long and drawn-out compromise to which it agreed. With that plan now at risk due to…
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Opinion Why Don’t We Wail Over the Arab Homes Destroyed for Our Kotel?
Over the past few months I have repeatedly been asked my opinion about the compromise agreement — now itself — to create an egalitarian prayer space adjacent to the Western Wall. As I watched women and men with tallitot and tefillin reading from the Torah and singing in celebration, I was grateful that after many years…
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Life Who Is To Blame for Collapse of Kotel Prayer Deal?
The Kotel prayer agreement appears to be going south — leaving us to ask how Israeli leaders from across the spectrum failed to deliver on an agreement that looked like a done deal. “The deal” of course, is about the Kotel, or Western Wall, and Robinson’s Arch — and who gets to pray where and how. These…
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Life Kotel Chaos Explained: Who Threw Whom Under the Bus, and Why
Editor’s Note: The fight for women’s prayer rights at the Western Wall, or Kotel, has been going on for so long and has so many twists and turns that we thought we’d ask one of the original activists to help our readers understand the saga. “Things are not always what they seem.”—Pheadrus There is so…
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News Kotel Egalitarian Prayer Advocates Have Faith Bibi Will Enforce Deal
(JTA) The Western Wall rabbi just denounced the Western Wall deal. Its supporters aren’t worried. And Women of the Wall activists are looking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to back them up. In January, Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz agreed to a historic compromise with non-Orthodox leaders over the future of the holy site. On…
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