I respectfully disagree with Rabbi Avi Shafran’s letter (Dec. 18) concerning the arrest of the woman at the Kotel.
First, the Kotel is a public place belonging to all Jews and not just one stream of Judaism. Therefore, no one group should have exclusive rights to this most holy site in Judaism.
I believe the Knesset law ceding the Temple Mount and its holiness to a group of fundamentalists who do not share in the ideals expressed by our tradition and free democracy, is unjust. The law cedes the moral high ground of the entire country by practicing religious discrimination. Peaceful civil disobedience is a most appropriate response to such an unjust law.
Rabbi Shafran’s analogy is false and not to the point of the editorial (“Guilty Of Praying,” Dec. 11). A better analogy would be that no liberal stream of Judaism would protest, throw rocks or raise placards at a separate-sex minyan right next to theirs in a public place. We would have our services, and they would have theirs. We would rejoice that so many different Jews are worshipping God sincerely, because we understand that there are more ways than one to seek and find God.
Marathon Jewish
Community Center
Douglaston, Queens
