The coalition government of Israel will tentatively vote Sunday on a plan to open an egalitarian prayer area at the Kotel (Western Wall). But the proposed egalitarian prayer space is dramatically scaled back from what the non-Orthodox groups and Women of the Wall (WoW) originally wanted.
Women Of The Wall, Non-Orthodox Movements, Set To Fold In Kotel Prayer Area Negotiations
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
The coalition government of Israel will tentatively vote Sunday on a plan to open an egalitarian prayer area at the Kotel (Western Wall). But the proposed egalitarian prayer space is dramatically scaled back from what the non-Orthodox groups and Women of the Wall (WoW) originally wanted.
But that's now okay with those non-Orthodox groups and WoW. They have reportedly agreed to take less in order to “prevent a backlash from the Jordanian authorities, which control the Muslim holy sites above the Western Wall, the non-Orthodox parties to the negotiations have reneged on their earlier demands for a major overhaul of the new egalitarian space site that would involve considerable new construction in a very politically sensitive area. They had originally demanded that the new space be equal in size and look to the existing gender-segregated prayer spaces,” Ha’aretz reported.
Regular readers of FailedMessiah.com will likely recall that FailedMessiah.com reported two years ago or more that it would be impossible to make the needed physical changes on the ground to make the new egalitarian prayer area contiguous with the existing Orthodox areas because of the roles played by the Muslim Waqf and Jordan and because even with their (very unlikely) approval, local Muslims would understand the construction as being a threat to their shrines on the Temple Mount and would repeatedly riot to stop it. More than two years later, what FailedMessiah.com was the first to report is now finally being reported by Ha’aretz.
To get around this problem, the non-Orthodox groups want to define the Kotel plaza area directly behind the Orthodox prayer areas as a “national site” rather than a holy site and use it for mixed-gender military ceremonies in which female soldiers could sing and play other public roles.
That would presumably allow the egalitarian prayer area given to the non-Orthodox groups and WoW to be smaller and less prominent than was originally demanded.
But for this to happen, the haredi rabbi of the Kotel, Shmuel Rabinowitz, has to agree, and so far he hasn’t.
All sides have agreed the new egalitarian prayer area will be given equal prominence with the Orthodox areas and will share an entrance with them. But without the physical redesign of the prayer areas themselves and the walk bridge to the Temple Mount, that should mean the non-Orthodox groups will be shunted off to the far south, out of sight and out of hearing from the main Kotel area – essentially the exact same situation the non-Orthodox groups and WoW vowed not to accept.
Original Women of the Wall (O-WoW), the primarily Orthodox breakaway from WoW, will likely continue to fight against this compromise in any way it can because for its members, praying together with men in the same undivided space is wrong. What O-WoW wants – and what WoW originally wanted – was to pray as they see fit in the already existing women’s section of the Kotel, a right Israeli courts granted them but which the Kotel’s haredi rabbi (often with the help of police) has managed to consistently, if illegally, deny.
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