What is this really about, you ask? Is it about tzedek, justice, pure and simple? Perhaps. It certainly has something to do with betzelem elohim, the teaching that every human being, regardless of gender (“male and female God created them,” Gen. 1:27), reflects the image of God, and so merits as much as anyone the right to pray, according to Jewish tradition, at Jewish tradition’s holiest site. Which in turn suggests that this is also about how we define “Jewish tradition,” and about who gets to determine that definition. There is even a way in which this conflict we see playing out at the Kotel is part of a larger existential drama, the question of whether and how a vital and viable Jewish people—let alone a democratic Jewish state—will persist throughout the 21st century and beyond.
Some argue that the Women of the Wall, with their bold demand for the right of women to pray communally at the Kotel, are destroying klal Yisrael, a sense of connection and kinship shared by all Jews around the world. But I would argue that the ultra-Orthodox authorities do far greater damage by preemptively alienating Jews who want no part of the deeply sexist, narrowly prescribed scene at the Kotel. What would become of the Jewish community or the Jewish state if only those who conformed to an ultra-Orthodox practice remained? What becomes of any organism or community that refuses change?
My colleagues have painted a disturbing picture of what happens to women who attempt to pray communally at the Kotel—which is, as Rabbi Suskin has pointed out, quite different from attempting a mixed-gender, egalitarian minyan. At the age of thirteen, on my first visit to Israel and the Kotel, I witnessed the fate of groups who wish to pray in an egalitarian minyan, even at the back of the women’s side, where men are not strictly prohibited. Perhaps the presence in our congregational tour group of men—including our rabbi—and children protected us from the shower of projectiles the Women of the Wall endure monthly. Still, some thirty years later I carry memories of angry Jewish voices shouting in Hebrew, and black-clad arms waving threateningly. If anything, barriers against such gatherings have only grown since. Fear not: nothing resembling accommodation takes place for either egalitarian or women’s minyanim at the main Kotel plaza.
Not everyone possesses the heart of an activist. Not everyone has the courage and strength and brute patience to regularly endure these kinds of confrontations. It will take a change in circumstances or more time to grow a movement, or both, before we see vast numbers clamoring to alter the status quo at the Kotel.
What you don’t see at the Kotel are all the people who don’t visit, or who come and acquiesce because it’s easier than trying to effect change. You don’t see, unless you’re looking for it,
the deterioration of conditions for all women at the Kotel over the past decade (speaking of very limited prime real estate). The Women of the Wall register a protest on behalf of all of these.
You imply that the disturbance created monthly by the Women of the Wall is perhaps unjustified based on their numbers. As I hope I’ve made clear, I disagree, but supposing it were true, what then? Should these women, too often arrested for their civil disobedience, be imprisoned or banned permanently from the Kotel? Would that, in your view, contribute to peace and unity for the Jewish people?
This is really about religious equality and dignity for Jewish women; really about justice, democracy, and human rights for all citizens in Israel, Jews and gentiles, women and men. Any who value these principles owe Women of the Wall a debt of gratitude.