Hitting the Wall

The Western Wall of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem isn’t actually the wall of the Temple. When the Romans sacked the city in the first century, they left nothing standing that could have served as a rallying flag. They carried off the treasures of the Temple and turned the building into a pile of rubble. The Arch of Titus in Rome bears the imprint of this event. It is the only detailed record we have of the sancta and furnishings of the Second Temple. The Western Wall is actually a kind of buttress that once helped to shore up the Temple Mount. Its sanctity is thus, in a sense, derivative—a reminder of what once stood above it.

To complicate matters, what we know as the Wall is just one stretch of the ancient retaining structure. It functions as a prayer space, under the supervision of the Israeli Rabbinate and, just as you would expect, Jewish Orthodoxy prevails. Men and woman are separated by a barrier and anything that happens in the vicinity of this plaza is tightly policed for deviant practice. Because many kinds of Jews end up near the Wall, physical conflict is a fairly regular occurance.

To alleviate some of this, the authorities of the State cleared another area south of the main plaza, and set it aside for egalitarian worship. For a while, it seemed to act as a pressure valve. Groups of progressive Jewish women convened there, conducted services, and read from Torah . Depending on who you asked for an opinion, it was either respectful worship or a bacchanalian orgy. Take a guess about the reaction of the Israeli Rabbinate.

But as grinding as this conflict has been, it has now reached another in series of boiling points. Thanks to an exceptionally misogynistic lawmaker, the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) is now fleshing out a law that would prohibit non-Orthodox prayer at the Wall. This kind of thing has happened before, but the effort seems to have a new level of traction. The law has passed its first so-called “reading,” and Netanyahu needs support from anyone he can persuade, That means horse-trading on religious worship is not beyond him. It’s yet another manifestation of messianic expectation, xenophobia, and radical polarization. Religious extremism is a protean phenomenon. It can take the form of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank or keeping Jewish women away from the Wall.

All of this is simply to be expected. We have passed the point where we can talk about pluralism as the natural condition of the People Israel. But what’s interesting to me is the level of backlash. Jewish communities, especially in the United States, have been stirred by the assault against progressive Judaism and are now organizing briskly for the battle ahead. They will not stand for the arrogance of the Rabbinate and are demanding that the State take decisive action.

Whatever happens next, I can feel the difference. The deference once paid to our brothers and sisters in Israel is no longer a given in the new Jewish world. No outcome in this fracas can be assured, but I predict this time that progressivism will ascend. The majority of Jews in the world are not Orthodox. They will no longer tolerate grotesque disrespect.