Livni, Bennett trade barbs over Women of the Wall

Religious Services Minister and Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett on Wednesday slammed Justice Minister Tzipi Livni (Hatnua) for publicly intervening in his effort to solve the crisis surrounding egalitarian women’s prayer at the Western Wall, and threatening to prevent him from approving new regulations on the subject.

In a letter to Bennett, Livni pointed out that any amendment to the Protection of Holy Places Law required the approval of the justice minister and that she was in favor of a court ruling that permitted the Women of the Wall group to pray with prayer shawls and teffilin in the women’s section of the site.

Responding in a Facebook post that started with the words “Tzipi Livni, come on,” Bennett accused the justice minister of creating “provocative spin” by informing media outlets that she had sent him the letter. Her statement was a “media trick for beginners” and mere provocation, he charged, because all government offices were closed during the Shavuot holiday and the letter would not have reached his bureau.

Bennett has in the past accused rivals of taking advantage of his religious observance by attacking him on Shabbat and holidays, when he cannot respond.

He said he never intended to solve the crisis surrounding the prayer site by imposing new regulations, but rather by reaching a compromise with all the relevant parties. “It’s a very sensitive issue,” he noted.

Bennett said he supported Jewish Agency chief Natan Sharansky’s plan to demarcate a third, more southern plaza at the wall where women could pray as they wished. However, he said, it would take about a year to build the plaza, and until then women would have to refrain from wearing prayer shawls and other controversial attire in the main women’s section.

Sharansky’s plan would have succeeded had the Jerusalem District Court not ruled in April that Women of the Wall members weren’t violating the law — which requires respect for the “local custom” of the site — by holding a group prayer service and wearing prayer shawls and tefillin, he said.

The women’s victory in court, he said, had left him with three options as religious services minister: to do nothing and allow confrontations and violence to ensue at the holy site, to submit new regulations forbidding women to pray with prayer shawls and tefillin, or to try to reach a compromise.

“I chose a third way, of attempted reconciliation,” Bennett wrote, noting that he had held many meetings with both sides and believed a compromise could be reached without a legislation. “It was the first time a religious services minister held talks with the Women of the Wall. And then came Tzipi Livni.”

The justice minister’s announcement, he said, had “undermined” and potentially thwarted his ability to reach a compromise, all, he charged, for the sake of “generating headlines in the paper.”

The Women of the Wall were catapulted to the headlines last weekend amid violent, vociferous protests from Haredi worshipers against their monthly prayer meeting at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Growing support from liberal Jews, whose prayer services involve women taking on roles that the mainstream of Orthodox Judaism reserves only for men, has been met with increased objection from the ultra-Orthodox camp.

In her letter, Livni wrote, “I’ll admit that I pray in an Orthodox synagogue and have accepted [Orthodox] customs, but I believe that the time is ripe – constitutionally and in terms of society and culture – to apply a pluralistic and tolerant approach at the Western Wall, allowing women to pray according to their customs, mostly because they do so in an area that is intended for women only… so that there is reduced possibility of causing offense.”

Bennett also spared a barb for Livni’s other task in the government, saying, “It’s a shame. This is not how an Israeli minister should behave. I hope she’s more competent in her management of negotiations with the Palestinians.”

Later, Livni took to Facebook to react to Bennett’s response to her letter.

“Naftali Bennett, come on!” she wrote, echoing his Facebook post. “Minister Bennett is upset. He claims that I didn’t consult him before writing him a letter clarifying my stance on women’s prayer at the wall.”

“Since the Women of the Wall controversy broke out,” Livni continued, “Minister Bennett hasn’t called me a single time to update me on the compromise attempts that he claims he’s trying to reach on the matter, even though the law requires us both to sign the regulations, so he has no one but himself to blame.”

Stuart Winer contributed to this report.