Many Jewish organizations in the Diaspora are threatening to withhold financial and political support from Jewish state after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu voted in the Cabinet last week against a previously agreed upon deal to expand the non-Orthodox prayer space at the Western Wall.
The issue, they say, is not just about prayer at the Wall but about the Orthodox monopoly on political decision including conversions and marriages in Israel. More than 500 people protested Saturday evening at Netanyahu’s Jerusalem residence to protest his decision to freeze plans for a permanent pluralistic prayer space overseen by all streams of Judaism at the Western Wall.
“The prime minister will discover in the coming weeks that the cry from the Israeli street and from the Jewish communities cannot be underestimated,” said Rabbi Gilad Kariv, executive director of the Reform Movement in Israel.
Netanyahu’s vote came as a surprise and was treated as a betrayal by American Jewish leaders who accused the prime minister of catering to the interests of his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners rather.
Last year, the Cabinet agreed to a permanent pluralistic prayer section, jointly overseen by non-Orthodox religious Jewish groups, at the Western Wall.
The agreement called upon Israel to expand and upgrade the non-Orthodox prayer section at the Western Wall plaza; construct a shared entrance to the Orthodox and non-Orthodox sections; and create a government-appointed, inter-denominational Jewish committee to govern the non-Orthodox section.
A senior Netanyahu official contends that his vote to freeze this agreement was actually in the best interest of world Jewry. He said the expansion of the prayer site would continue while the creation of an interdenominational committee would be frozen. Ultra-Orthodox Jews object to the idea of such a committee saying that it is tantamount to state recognition of non-Orthodox Judaism.
“The official told JTA that the suspension of the deal is itself a compromise: the Haredi parties wanted to cancel the deal altogether. Freezing the agreement, the official said, allows for continued negotiations to rework it,” according to the JTA article. “It also may provide an acceptable answer to the Supreme Court, which is considering a petition to force the government to provide an ‘appropriate space’ for non-Orthodox prayer at the wall.”
Non-Orthodox leaders remained skeptical.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, told JTA, he was also displeased with the latest development.
“What the government is currently planning to do in no way meets the promises and the details of this agreement,” he said.
Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of the Women of the Wall prayer group, said the agreement was already a compromise and that she couldn’t trust the government moving forward.
Partitioning prayer between men and women at the Western Wall apparently only started when Israel regained authority over the Western Wall area after the Six-Day War in 1967. Photographs from the mid-1800s portray men and women praying together at the Wall.
In the 1990s and from 2000, non-Orthodox Jewish groups started lobbying to open up a pluralistic prayer section at the wall. Meanwhile, the separations between the men’s and women’s sections have gotten higher in order to prevent the smuggling of Torah scrolls into the women’s section.
After three and a half years of negotiations a government decision was passed in 2016 to create a larger and more contiguous pluralistic prayer area.
Some Jewish leaders in America have hinted that Netanyahu’s surprise vote on Sunday against this agreement could result in a loss of financial and political support of Israel by American Jews.
“Given all the challenges facing Israel and American Jewry, this is a time when ‘achdut,’ unity, is more important than ever,” according to a letter from both the chairman and the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Stephen Greenberg and Malcolm Hoenlein. “A lack of unity could lead to an erosion of support, which has been identified by Israel’s National Security Council as a vital security asset for Israel.”
The Jewish Agency and the Reform movement, which represents the largest denomination of American Jewry, cancelled scheduled meetings with the prime minister in protest. Natan Sharansky, who chairs the Jewish Agency, warned that Jewish communities and individuals could reconsider traveling or donating to Israel because of this decision.
“Yesterday, I heard something that I thought I’d never hear before. And I understand the source of the frustration and the source of the anger. But I heard a major Jewish organization say that they needed to rethink their support for the State of Israel,” he said. “That’s something unthinkable in my lifetime, up until yesterday. We have to do better. We must do better.”