Groups Say Incident at the Wall Shows Need to Promote Pluralism

An attack last week by ultra-Orthodox men on a women’s prayer group at the Western Wall in Jerusalem has angered some American Jewish groups and convinced them of the need to promote religious pluralism in Israel.

The American Jewish Congress Commission for Women’s Equality issued a statement Wednesday calling on Israeli authorities to “protect the rights of women who seek to pray at the Western Wall and to uphold fundamental principles of equality and religious freedom.”

The statement was issued by Judith Stern Peck and Bella Abzug, co-chairs of the commission’s advisory committee, on behalf of “AJCongress and its international network of Jewish feminists.”

Ira Silverman, executive vice president of the American Jewish Committee, said in a statement that his organization “condemns unequivocally the violent and unwarranted attack.”

He said the incident “underscores the ongoing need to promote a strong measure of religious respect from the ultra-right.”

“Let us maintain our respect for one another and refuse to allow differences fo opinion over points of Jewish law from becoming acts of religious bigotry,” said Silverman.

Mark Gold, president of Americans for Progressive Israel, called the incident “evidence of an escalation and intensification of religious coercion and the lengths to which the ultra-Orthodox will go to impose their views and practices on others.”

CONDEMNATION FROM ORTHODOX

The incident occurred on March 30 when ultra-Orthodox men tried to prevent some 60 women from holding a prayer service at the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site. Police lobbed tear gas to disperse the protesters, who had begun to hurl metal chairs at the women, injuring one of them.

Although accounts of the incident vary, the women were said to have eschewed the carrying of a Torah or the donning of prayer shawls, at the request of Rabbi Meir Yehudn Getz, the Religious Affairs Ministry official in charge of the Wall. The ultra-Orthodox consider both acts to be defilement when performed by women.

Gold, whose organization supports Mapam, the United Workers Party of Israel, said there is nothing in Jewish law that forbids women to pray together at the Wall. He urged the government to remove any rulings preventing them from doing so.

An American Orthodox leader also condemned the incident this week. Rabbi Binyamin Walfish, executive vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, said in a telephone interview, “We are against any kind of violent activity or protest whatsoever.”

Walfish said that he understood that Getz had given the women permission to hold their prayer service at the Wall, a ruling the ultra-Orthodox protesters should have acknowledged.

“If they must protest — and in a democracy that is the right of every human being, whether he is right or wrong — there is a proper way to protest. Let them carry signs, but to throw chairs is disgraceful.”