Women Of The Wall Splits As Longtime Members Accuse Chairwoman Anat Hoffman Of Selling Them Out

One dozen leading members of Women of the Wall (WoW), including some who were the group’s founding members, are challenging the leadership of Anat Hoffman and fighting a compromise Hoffman once called equivalent to being "relegated to the back of the bus" but has now accepted after the Conservative Movement allegedly moved to abandon WoW in exchange for control over the new egalitarian prayer area at Robinson's Arch.

Women Of The Wall Splits As Longtime Members Accuse Chairwoman Anat Hoffman Of Selling Them Out
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com

One dozen leading members of Women of the Wall (WoW), including some who were the group’s founding members, are challenging the leadership of Anat Hoffman, Ha’aretz reported Friday.

Hoffman is the group’s longstanding chairwoman. Her decision last week, backed by the group’s board, to provisionally accept a compromise that see WoW pray at a new egalitarian area at Robinson’s Arch rather than at the Kotel (Western Wall) proper is reportedly the source of the split.

In a statement issued Friday, Hoffman’s WoW critics insisted they will not give up the fight for the right to pray undisturbed at the Kotel proper.

“Now, Jewish women have been offered another version of the Robinson’s Arch proposal. The area will be altered. The name of the holy site will be appropriated and bestowed on the archeological site, also to be called ‘the Wall.’ You will be with other Jews whose prayer practice those in charge of the Kotel also do not tolerate. We reject this and remain committed to our original goals,” Hoffman’s WoW critics – among them Dr. Bonna Haberman, who initiated the first prayer service of Women of the Wall 25 years ago, and Dr. Phyllis Chesler, a founding member of the International Committee for Women of the Wall – reportedly wrote, adding that, they “reject any policy that demeans or degrades women in public space or that causes their removal from the Jewish sacred place because they adhere to our prayer practice.”

Hoffman had previously called the Robinson’s Arch compromise the equivalent of WoW being relegated to “the back of the bus.”

The vast majority of Hoffman’s WoW critics live in the United States. About one-third of them are Orthodox.

Orthodox women will not pray in the same prayer space with men, so the egalitarian prayer area does not meet their needs, a fact Hoffman and WoW repeatedly cited as a reason to reject the Robinson’s Arch compromise – until last week.

Now Wow says it will move to Robinson’s Arch, but only after specific benchmarks, most of which were in Jewish Agency head Natan Sharansky’s proposed compromise, have been met by the government.

The major points included in those benchmarks are:

• That there be one entrance to all three prayer areas – the traditional Kotel’s men’s and women’s section and the new egalitarian section at Robinson’s Arch.

• That the sections all be at the same level and contiguous.

• That the ramp to the Temple Temple Mount that cuts off Robinson’s Arch from the Kotel proper be removed or altered to allow for the the two areas to be contiguous.

• That women who want to have women-only prayer services be allowed to do so in the egalitarian section and be provided with temporary portable mechitzas (dividers) to allow that to happen.

• The the Kotel’s haredi rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitch, have no control over the new egalitarian section at all.

“We respect all voices and they deserve to be heard. However, there is only one Women of the Wall. We are a registered non-profit and we voted in a democratic process to stay in the women’s section while also leading this groundbreaking change at the Kotel,” Shira Pruce, WoW’s spokeswoman, told Ha’aretz.

Ha’aretz confirms earlier exclusive FailedMessiah.com about the role of the Conservative Movement in forcing this new compromise.

WoW, Ha’aretz reported, “had come under mounting pressure in recent weeks, particularly from the Conservative Movement, to show some more openness to the idea of a new egalitarian section follow[ing] the [unilateral] construction in late August of a new temporary prayer platform for mixed services [there] by Religious Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett. The platform, near the site of the archeological excavations by Robinson’s Arch, is equipped to accommodate about 450 worshippers and was designated for members of the Conservative and Reform movements.”

WoW apparently feared that the Conservative Movement would sell them out and take control of the new egalitarian area while the Reform Movement, headed by a young, inexperienced and naive leader, would do nothing to intercede. The proposed compromise would also strengthen Anat Hoffman’s power within that movement.

WoW is set to formally submit its required benchmarks to the government early this week.

Hoffman’s WoW critics reportedly will finalize their plan of action to overturn WoW’s decision to compromise early this week, as well.

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New Egalitarian Prayer Area Near Kotel Empty, Unused

Video: Diaspora Relations Minister Misrepresents New Egalitarian Kotel Plaza

Comments

[Nachum]

Now we will see the hardcore troublemakers who are really only interested n being in the media spotlight.

[Boychikel]

I personally have no problem with splitting the Kotel into three parts, as long as Wow and any other woman can pray in the traditional women's section wearing phyllacteries and tallises, as the Jerusalem District Court gave them the right to do.

I would like to see the third section contiguous to the other two, which will mean dismantling the ramp and knocking down a wall.

There is another solution, which would be simply rotating the sections; on odd days, the "equalitarian" section is Robinson's Arch; on even days, it's the Kotel proper (the designation of "odd" and "even" will go by the Jewish calendar, so Wow will always be at the Kotel on Rosh Chodesh).

[Maskil]

With the proposed compromise:

Israel doesn't actually need to get permission from the Waqf or Jordan to clear the area and build a new bridge. The government never officially gave any authority to the Waqf, and the state of Israel completely controls the Kotel plaza, the Temple mount and the Al-Aksa mosque. But it's going to "ask" anyway, for two reasons: One, the proposal would cost a fortune and the government doesn't have the budget (let alone the willingness to spend it for such a small group - not even if one sees it as spending it for the "rioters"). Two, it is part of Netanyahu's policy of de facto segregating Jerusalem so that if dividing it in peace negociations is necessary for holding onto his leadership it can be slid into the concept of "status quo" (I.e. "it's already the reality on the ground, so we're not actually proposing to change anything, so why change it when an agreement is so viable?").

So what's going to actually happen if it goes through? Business as usual, asking the WoW to "hold back on provocation ... temporarily," and then they're gonna be told that "most" of their demands can be met, but the contiguity isn't really an equality issue ("you guys already received equality") but a national policy issue that the courts have no involvement in and which needs to be part of a state policy agreement with the (fabricated) other side (the PA or Jordan, you pick which one is intended). So, Rabinovitch will run "his" two sections like he's the Ayatollah of the Wall, while Conservative gets its own non-segregated section (with all the authority and funding involved), and the WoW are left with diddly-squat. ... And then the liberals and feminists just stop showing up on rosh hodesh to "show soliderity and fight for equal rights." Because "suddenly" those things don't fucking matter, although no one will be willing to comment, because they apparently weren't all that important to begin with.

Too little too late? I hope not.

Splitting with the Reform, Anat Hoffman (whose goals and objectives were not their own) was a move a long time coming. Better late than never. I hope it leads to the right of any woman to pray traditionally in the women's section as she sees fit, while harming no one and being protected from being harmed.