Making the new prayer space at the Western Wall was meant to be “historic” and “revolutionary,” creating a permanent area where male and female non-Orthodox Jews could worship together.
But it also has underscored a divide between Israel’s Orthodox and the Diaspora, or Jews living outside of Israel.
Rabbi Uri Regev told The New York Times that too much attention has been devoted to the Western Wall in comparison to work done in other areas of Israeli life where many Jews have been suffering under the strictly Orthodox rabbinate — which doesn’t even recognize Reform or Conservative Judaism as Judaism at all. Under this control many immigrants do not qualify as fully Jewish and cannot even be married or buried in Israel.
Regev thinks the compromise of the new prayer space is “in some sense … dramatic. I hope that this euphoric phase will not weaken our ability to look reality in the face … and understand that compelling battles still lie ahead.”
The new prayer space will be governed by a committee comprised of the Jewish Agency and will include representatives from the Reform and Conservative movements, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Israeli government and Women of the Wall, a group that has been bucking the male-dominated Western Wall for 27 years.
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