Knesset synagogue reopens, with tiny women’s section

The Knesset on Monday unveiled its newly renovated synagogue, which included a women’s section some one-eighth the size of the men’s.

Half an hour before sunset on Monday, there were half a dozen men in the prayer space, and no women. The men’s section has dozens of chairs. In the women’s section, partitioned off by a six-foot curtain, there are seven chairs set up, with a maximum capacity of perhaps 15-20.

The room was expanded from its original 65 square meters (700 square feet) to 100 square meters (1,070 square feet), with a movable wall, offering the option of enlarging the room further to 230 square meters (2,450 square feet), if necessary.

“The synagogue is active and lively. Every day, dozens of worshipers pray there,” a statement from a Knesset spokesperson said. “There are Torah lessons there. In light of the number of worshipers and the crowded conditions, the Knesset speaker gave instructions to expand the room and adapt it to the number of worshipers.”

A Knesset spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the size of the women’s section. It was not immediately clear whether it, too, had been expanded in the renovation.

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein inaugurated the new synagogue on Monday in a ceremony attended by Jerusalem’s chief rabbis, who affixed a mezuzah on the doorpost.

“The synagogue is the soul and spirit of the Knesset,” said Edelstein.

“After I saw the overcrowding every day, in light of the rise in the number of worshipers, thank God, I reasoned that just as in the times of the Temple they said ‘no one ever said: I do not have a place’ — it’s essential that we, too, allow everyone to enter comfortably and not resign themselves to standing at the threshold. I am happy the expansion came to fruition, for men and women alike, as befits the Israeli parliament in the Jewish state.”

A record 33 of the 120 current Knesset members are women.