Ultra-Orthodox MKs tell Netanyahu to cancel Western Wall compromise

Ultra-Orthodox lawmakers called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to overturn the year-old government decision calling for a pluralistic prayer pavilion at the Western Wall.

According to Israeli media reports, following a Jerusalem meeting Sunday between Israel’s two chief rabbis, the heads of the two ultra-Orthodox political factions, and a minister from Jewish Home, a letter was sent to Netanyahu demanding that the issue of pluralistic prayer be brought to the cabinet on Sunday, “because it is incompatible with the ruling of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.”

At the meeting, the MKs voted to work toward undoing the negotiated agreement passed by the cabinet a year ago that approved the construction of an egalitarian prayer pavilion in the Robinson’s Arch archaeological park, alongside the Orthodox-controlled one at the Western Wall plaza.

Almost three years in the making, that negotiated deal called for the creation of an “official and respected” 9,700-square foot prayer space, running along a 31-foot segment of the southern section of the Western Wall. It would have common entrance with the Orthodox pavilion, a government-funded staff, and Torah scrolls and other ritual objects, and be open to and administered by all Jewish denominations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with Shas leader and then-economy minister Aryeh Deri in the Knesset on June 17, 2015. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)

Sunday’s letter to Netanyahu stresses urgency, following a High Court interim ruling earlier this month which ordered the immediate halt of women being searched for ritual items such as Torah scrolls, and gave the state 30 days to find “good cause” why a woman may not read aloud from a Torah scroll as part of prayer services at the Western Wall. In the interim order, the court also cast doubt on the state’s argument that the Robinson’s Arch area of the plaza constitutes “access to the Western Wall.”

This is the third time the ultra-Orthodox parties have called on Netanyahu to overturn the government decision.

Chief Sephardi Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, right, and Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi David Lau attend a New Year’s ceremony of the Israel Police Command at the National Headquarters of the Israel Police in Jerusalem on September 7, 2015. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

The lawmakers also called on Netanyahu to instruct Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit to give the Chief Rabbinate representation at any future court hearings on the matter, charging that Mandelblit, who was instrumental in negotiating the government decision, has a conflict of interest in his desire to see it through to fruition.

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The letter to the prime minister was signed by Shas party head Interior Minister Aryeh Deri, head of the Shas party, Health Minister Yaakov Litzman and Moshe Gafni of the United Torah Jusaism party, Minister of Religious Services David Azoulay (Shas), and Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel (Jewish Home), who all attended a meeting on Sunday at the offices of the Chief Rabbinate with Chief Rabbis David Lau and Yitzhak Yosef.

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, rabbi of the Western Wall, and Rabbi Avigdor Nebenzahl, former chief rabbi of Jerusalem’s Old City, were also at the meeting.

After the meeting, Ariel tweeted that they will not allow the government to change the status quo or recognize the Reform movement.

Despite the comment, a spokesman for Education and Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett, who heads Ariel’s Jewish Home party, said his “position in support of the compromise hasn’t changed. The ball is in the prime minister’s court.”

Reform female and male rabbis pray together at Robinson’s Arch, the Western Wall site slated for future egalitarian services, on Thursday, February 25, 2016. (Y.R/Reform movement)

In response to the ultra-Orthodox parties’ seeking to overturn the government decision, Women of the Wall executive director Lesley Sachs insisted that the deal must go ahead.

“The ultra-Orthodox representatives seem to have a problem accepting reality. The negotiations already took place over a period of three years, and throughout they refused to sit at the same table with us,” Sachs said. “We welcome their change in attitude and will be happy to engage in any necessary conversations with them, but for now, the government must implement the decision already made.”

Shulamit Magnus, a founder of Women of the Wall and its splinter group Original Women of the Wall condemned both last year’s deal and the current proposal to overturn it. Magnus said that both seek to change the status of the Western Wall, which is currently categorized as a national holy site, “and make it officially into a synagogue, a denominational site that privileges certain Jews and discriminates against and denies the rights and access of others.”

“We of OWOW remain steadfast in the exercise of Jewish women’s recognized rights to full religious expression at the Kotel [Western Wall] and in pursuit of the several lawsuits we have underway about this. We go nowhere — except to jail, if the progressives or the regressives send us there — but the Kotel,” said Magnus.

On Thursday the Shas party said it would push forward a proposal that would make it illegal to hold pluralistic prayer services at the Western Wall plaza, imposing fines on anyone who holds a mixed-gender service or women’s Torah readings, and women who don a prayer shawl or phylacteries, at any area of the Western Wall, even those that had not been traditionally set aside for prayer.