MK to host pluralist Hanukkah candle-lighting at Knesset

Move follows anger over exclusion of women from official state lighting ceremony at Western Wall on Sunday

By JTA 7 December 2015, 11:43 pm

Edit

Member of Knesset Ksenia Svetlova lights a Hanukkah menorah at the Western Wall with Women of the Wall founding director Anat Hoffman (center), December 6, 2015. (Victoria Polak)

A lawmaker is to host a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony at the Knesset that will include women and representatives of the Reform and Conservative movements.

The lighting, to take place Tuesday, was set up by Knesset member Michal Rozin of the left-wing Meretz party as a response to a state candle-lighting ceremony at the Western Wall on Sunday that did not include women.

Women of the Wall, which organizes monthly women’s prayer services at the Western Wall, held its own candle lighting at the site on Sunday, also in protest of the state ceremony.

Tuesday’s lighting will include Reform Rabbi Gilad Kariv and Conservative Rabbi Yizhar Hess — leaders of their respective denominations in Israel — as well as Women of the Wall chairwoman Anat Hoffman; Hanna Kehat, founder of Kolech Religious Women’s Forum; and Mickey Gitzin, founder of the religious pluralism nonprofit Be Free Israel.

Illustrative: The Knesset, Israel's parliament building in Jerusalem. (Orel Cohen/Flash90) — Illustrative photo of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament building in Jerusalem (Orel Cohen/Flash90)

“We are creating a growing circle of Israelis that don’t only support religious pluralism on a political level, but also demonstrate that it can be done,” Kariv told JTA. “We are moving forward with building a wide alliance of religious and secular groups that accept the pluralist reality in Israel as a fact and blessing.”

On Sunday, about 100 women gathered at the Western Wall for the WoW event.

File: Meretz MKs Tamar Zandberg (left) and Michal Rozin attend a candle lighting ceremony organized by "Women of the Wall" on the 3rd night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, at the Western Wall, in Jerusalem's Old City, December 18, 2014. (Danielle Shitrit/Flash90) — File: Meretz MKs Tamar Zandberg (left) and Michal Rozin attend a candle lighting ceremony organized by “Women of the Wall” on the 3rd night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, at the Western Wall, in Jerusalem’s Old City, December 18, 2014. (Danielle Shitrit/Flash90)

Security guards permitted 20 women to enter with their menorahs, but then attempted to ban and confiscate a large communal one being brought in by the Women of the Wall organization.

Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova of the Zionist Union party used her parliamentary immunity to bring the communal menorah in to the site on Sunday night, the first night of Hanukkah, the Women of the Wall said in a statement.

“Despite [Western Wall] Rabbi [Shmuel] Rabinovitch’s ridiculous regulations and despite the police’s shameful attempts to keep us out, we entered and held a candle-lighting ceremony where women were full participants,” Svetlova said in a statement.

“The Western Wall belongs to the entire Jewish people, women and men alike, and the time has come for real equality — at the Kotel, in the Rabbinate and beyond,” Svetlova said.

Last week, the Attorney General’s Office ordered Rabinovitch to include women in the annual national candle-lighting ceremony for Hanukkah in response to a campaign by Women of the Wall claiming that the state-sponsored exclusion of women from the Western Wall ceremony is discrimination and violates government regulations.

The national candle lighting ceremony was held Sunday night in the men’s section of the Western Wall plaza, where the first candle was lit by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A second ceremony was set to be held in an area further away from the Wall with several female government officials, including Knesset members Gila Gamliel and Miri Regev, despite Women of the Wall’s plea for women lawmakers not to attend.