Jewish groups in Israel and the United States hailed the decision as a historic step toward religious pluralism in Israel.
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The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) welcomed the decision by Israel’s cabinet to establish a permanent and official space at the Western Wall for mixed gender prayer at Judaism’s holiest site.
The new prayer space will be jointly governed by a new body that will include Women of the Wall and the Masorti and Reform movements and will be led by the Chair of the Executive of The Jewish Agency for Israel.
Israel’s Cabinet voted today to allow non-Orthodox Jewish prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a move advocates said marked a historic show of government support for liberal streams of Judaism. Writing for the liberal Israeli daily Haaretz, Yair Ettinger said the compromise meant “Reform and Conservative prayer are being recognised for the first time in Israeli law, a fact of ethical and symbolic importance”.
But the compromise agreement also highlights the deep rift between the world’s two largest Jewish communities over how religion should be practiced in the Jewish state, where ultra-Orthodox control is entrenched over religious life. They resist any inroads from liberals often considered to be second-class Jews who ordain women and gays and are overly inclusive toward converts and interfaith marriages.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) on Monday said that the newly announced co-ed section of the Western Wall prayer area is a violation of the status quo, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.
According to the plan, Israel also plans to build a new plaza where both men and women can pray together.
Shmuel Rabinowitz, the ultra-Orthodox rabbi of the Western Wall, said in a statement that the decision left him with “a heavy heart” but that he feels relieved that the Women of the Wall group has agreed to pray in the new area.
“If you look at the charter of WOW from 20 years ago it talks of prayer in the women’s section of the Western Wall”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu firmly rejected statements by government ministers and members of the Knesset in the wake of this week’s approval of an egalitarian section at the Western Wall.
Women of the Wall negotiated officially recognizing the prayer site as mixed-gender..
Calling Women of the Wall a “fringe and vociferous group”, he says in a statement that the wall, once a place of unity, has become one of “incessant quarrels”. The soon to be bigger prayer space will come under the joint administration of a new body including Conservative and Reform movements and Women of the Wall.
“We continue to seek equal funding”, she said.
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“It’s not going to be run by an Orthodox rabbi”, Pruce said. “I’m proud to be an Orthodox Jew, but I’m minister of the entire Jewish Diaspora and I won’t accept attempts to taint the Jewish people”. The Ruderman Family Foundation, a leader in Israel-American Jewry relations, strongly condemned comments made by the chairman of the Knesset Finance Committee Moshe Gafni Sunday that Reform Jews are “clowns” and that “there will never, ever be recognition for this group of clowns, not at the [Western] Wall and not anywhere else”.
