The dispute about the Western Wall should have ended long ago, mostly for the sake of the wall, which has become the focus of political battles. But what we saw on Friday, the first day of the Hebrew month Adar II, was out of bounds for political debate and could have been defined as something much more serious: desecration, or as it known in Hebrew, "hillul hashem."
I am familiar with the arguments of those who oppose the compromise on egalitarian prayer. They have to do with a nearly 200-year-long dispute between the veteran rabbinical stream of Judaism and the newer streams. Most Jewish citizens of Israel follow tradition in a way similar to the members of the Conservative and Reform movements but the vast majority do not see themselves as part of either of those movements. The difference is in the declaration: Traditional Israelis don't raise the flag on a new stream of Judaism – they go along with the traditions of an Orthodox synagogue.
But what does all this have to do with the monthly insanity at the Western Wall? A group of men and women arrive to pray – they're different from what is acceptable in the local landscape. So what? They came to pray! I believe them. True, it looks like a provocation, but what do we want – for them to hide? Their difference stirs up a provocation. But they want to be part of those who pray at the Western Wall. Why can't they just be ignored for an hour until they're done praying?
What we saw in the pictures – Jews draped in prayer shawls and phylacteries being beaten, trampled, their kippahs knocked off, subjected to vicious curses – and all this at the site of our holy Temple? Has the zealotry over the place's sanctity achieved anything? The world doesn't differentiate between one kind of Jew and another, it never has. Certainly not when those Jews are wearing kippahs.
In the second century C.E. Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi sat in the Galilee, assembling the Mishna, and taught: "Weigh the loss of a commandment against the reward for [fulfilling] it." Even according to the most stringent, the damage ("loss") caused to the position they are trying to defend is immeasurably greater than the benefit ("commandment") that they sought through kicking the mixed group of worshippers out. Rabbi Yehuda did not rest with advice, and asked, "Which is the right path that a person should choose for himself?" His answer was "Whichever [path] that is an honor to the person adopting it and [brings] honor to him from people." If people do not understand what lies at the root of all the fuss, and all they see is violence toward worshippers wearing prayer shawls and phylacteries, there is no glory here, there is only disgrace.
Israeli society and Israel as the Jewish nation-state have an enormous responsibility toward our people in the Diaspora. The Reform (and Conservative) movements need us. The worrying numbers about the shrinking liberal sectors of the Jewish community demand cooperation on a broad-based initiative for Jewish education. More than Israeli society, world Jewry needs "religification." The battle for Jewish identity, as weak as it might be, is a battle for our existence. Identity is not built by hollow declarations, but rather by studying our people's eternal treasures, by teaching the Hebrew language and its culture and religious tradition. And yes, also by visiting the Western Wall and letting the spiritual longing wash over us. Violence at the Western Wall will only keep them away from us. That isn't what you do with family, even when they make someone mad.
The Prophet Isaiah, who lived in Jerusalem in the eighth century BCE, predicted that "My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples" (Isaiah 56:7). He was talking about the Temple, not the Western Wall, which is the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount. Still, if it is seen as a place of prayer by all the nations of the world, it is certainly a place of prayer for our brothers and sisters from all streams of Judaism.
