The haredi rabbi of the Kotel (Western Wall) has accepted the "compromise" proposed yesterday by Natan Sharansky – a separate egalitarian section of the Kotel at Robinson's Arch. This isn't much of a surprise because that area will be cut off from the traditional prayer areas used by
Jews for centuries by a solid ramp leading to the Temple Mount. The two
areas will be completely separate and out of sight and hearing from each
other. Not only that, Robinson's Arch is much further from the spot
where the Temple stood than the traditional prayer area is.
The Kotel. Robinson's Arch is to the right of the large ramp leading up to the Temple Mount seen at the far right of this photograph.
According to a report by the Associated Press, the haredi rabbi of the Kotel (Western Wall), Shmuel Rabinovitch, has accepted the "compromise" proposed yesterday by Natan Sharansky – a separate egalitarian section of the Kotel at Robinson's Arch.
Of course, this isn't much of a surprise because, as I reported yesterday, that area will be cut off from the traditional prayer areas used by Jews for centuries by a solid ramp leading to the Temple Mount. The two areas will be completely separate and out of sight and hearing from each other. Not only that, Robinson's Arch is much further from the spot where the Temple stood than the traditional prayer area is.
Sharansky – perhaps most known in the West for his backing of the Iraq war and his contention that democracy could sweep the Middle East and bring stability – has become Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's point man with Diaspora Jewish communities who still think of Sharansky as the Soviet Refusenik he was decades ago. (In can be persuasively argued that most of the good things and qualities people attribute to Sharansky really belong to his long-suffering wife Avital, who crusaded non-stop to get him released from a Soviet gulag.)
US President George W. Bush endorsed Sharansky's 2004 book on democracy as the cure for the world's evils by saying that, "I felt like his book confirmed what I believe."
What ideas Sharansky advocated in speeches and in meetings with foreign leaders before he wrote them in his book can be seen in practice in Afghanistan and Iraq today – two noted failures of Sharansky's doctrine.
Sharansky 'solves' the problem of Robinson's Arch's separation from the Kotel by renaming it and by extending the Kotel's plaza southward so that the southward entrance to the Kotel plaza , no matter which part you intend to pray at, will be the same and will be closer to Robinson's Arch. The western and northern entrances would, however, remain the same.
All in all, this 'solution' gives all but the most extreme haredim everything they wanted, and Women of the Wall and liberal Jewish movements nothing other than a plaque and perhaps more convenient restroom access.
It's like allowing Blacks to rent apartments in the far reaches of Queens, calling that neighborhood Manhattan, and saying a completely rich and white Manhattan is now "integrated." It is separate and unequal – and it is also a lie.
Related Post: Kotel 'Compromise' No Compromise At All.