blogs/rabbi-ed-feinstein

Talking to a Wall
Rabbi Ed Feinstein

In the middle of the summer, we commemorate T'sha B'Av, the ninth day of the month of Av. This year, it will begin the evening of July 30. On this day, the long history of Jewish tragedies are remembered -- the destruction of our holy Temple and of our holy city, Jerusalem, the long history of Jewish exile, the expulsions, pogroms, and persecutions that haunt Jewish memory. Tucked into the sad liturgy of this day is a dire warning to future generations: Asked the rabbis: Why was Jerusalem destroyed? They answered: Because of sinat hinam, unbounded rivalry. It wasn't Babylonian or Roman power that banished God from the world, but the inability of the Jewish people to find common cause, to temper internecine conflicts and rise to the defense of the holy city. We couldn't get along, and so God departed. We Jews may be an eternal people, but never underestimate our self-destructive capacities.  

There is a poignant reminder of our history in the center of Jerusalem -- the Kotel. The Kotel is a refugee from our history, all that's left of the great Temple that once stood proudly at the heart of Jerusalem. The Kotel was not actually part of the Temple; it is a fragment of the retaining wall holding up the Temple Mount. A retaining wall, holding sanctity above the shifting ground of history and politics. The Kotel has become our symbol of return -- to our homeland, our city, our dignity as a people.

Like everything else in Jerusalem, the Kotel is both symbol and reality. It is symbol of our collective peoplehood. In reality, it is a synagogue governed by the very Orthodox Jerusalem rabbinate. That rabbinate has always maintained a separation between men and women, and has prohibited women from praying aloud or reading Torah even among themselves -- practices which are technically permitted under traditional Jewish law. After years of protest by Jews demanding a more egalitarian practice, a compromise was reached two years ago which would have allowed for the development of a separate egalitarian prayer area adjacent to the Kotel, but well separated from the Orthodox-governed section. For two years, the government of Israel delayed the implementation of that compromise. This week, they withdrew altogether. The compromise plan has been cancelled.

I can pray at the Kotel, but my wife cannot. I can hear the Torah read at the Kotel, but she cannot. If she dons a tallit for private prayer at the Kotel, she will be arrested. If she prays aloud, she will be shouted down or escorted away.  Her spirituality, her voice, is deemed an affront to the Kotel. The great symbol of our collective destiny has become a political token, a tool of division. And sinat hinam, our inability to embrace one another, the very reason we lost the city twice before, burns once more.

Sometimes you feel like you're talking to a wall.  

Here are few responses to the current crisis:

• Statement of the Rabbinical Assembly
• Resolution of the Jewish Agency
• Yossi Klein Halevi, “The Tragedy of the Wall”
• Donniel Hartman, An Affront to Zionism