Finding compromise at the wall (UPDATED)

It’s fairly easy to justify wallowing in pessimism over the prospect of a reasonable compromise in the simmering dispute over women’s prayer rights at the Western Wall. Both sides often appear in the media like intransigent ideologues who will be satisfied with nothing short of surrender by their opponents.

But two essays out today by leading advocates on both sides display a degree of conciliation that, to my eyes, is both unexpected and remarkable.

Agudath Israel Director of Public Affairs Rabbi Avi Shafran, a man often charged with defending the most restrictive views of haredi Orthodoxy to the wider world, published a column today in which he urges his fellow traditionalists to show a little empathy for those Jews raised in liberal backgrounds that find it more than a little odd that women don’t have equal status at Judaism’s holiest site.

Imagine a woman raised in a Reform or Conservative environment, who read from the Torah at her bat-mitzvah and for whom services led by women in the presence of men are the norm. When she visits Israel and is drawn to the Kosel she may well feel that something is somehow “wrong,” that while many women are present and praying, only men are conducting group services and reading from the Torah. Can we not empathize with her? If we can’t, we are lacking. Even misguided feelings are feelings.

There are powerful arguments for maintaining the status quo at the Kosel: Halacha is the historical heritage of all Jews. The Kosel is a remnant of the courtyard wall of the Second Holy Temple, where “Orthodox” services were the only ones there were. And permitting non-traditional group services at the Kosel main plaza will invite proponents of atheistic “Humanistic Judaism” to claim their fair share of the area, not to mention “Hebrew Christian” groups seeking their own time-share.

Making the case for halachic standards at the Kosel with reason, though, is one thing. More important than arguments in the end is empathy – on all sides.

Rabbi David Wolpe from Sinai Temple in Los Angeles struck a similar tone in a piece for Tablet. 

Failing to sympathize with the traditionalists’ ideology, as so many modernists do, demonstrates a disdain for certain religious passion, and even a certain lack of human fellow feeling. After all, the power of custom has long been venerated in Judaism. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, tradition is democracy of the dead; if everyone who ever lived had a vote, tradition would win. To disregard it without thought or reverence is simply not the Jewish way.

Too many fear that to understand the opposition means they cannot argue their own side with passion and conviction. Yet there are very few disputes in human life where all the worthiness lives on one side of the divide. We have just lived through an election season where significant numbers of each party seemed to think the other afflicted with wickedness, idiocy, or wicked idiocy. This is not an intellectually respectable position, no matter how often you hear it on talk shows—or occasionally, alas, from pulpits.

Reversing ancient religious practices is a painful process, and I don’t imagine Women of the Wall will ever sing kumbaya with the rabbinical overseers of the Old City. But I wonder how things could change if each side conceded, however grudgingly, that the other side does have a point.

Wonder, indeed. Empathizing with a dissenting view is one thing, finding a tolerable compromise on such a deeply divisive issue is another. But surely cooler tempers are more likely to be successful. 

UPDATE: Susan Esther Barnes wasn’t quite as impressed with Shafran’s call for sensitivity, noting that his description of women’s prayer gatherings at the wall as "antics" and calling one of their leaders a "warrior" wasn’t a very promising way to begin showing respect for the sensibilities of others.