Grapevine: 'A city knit together'?

• Author: GREER FAY CASHMAN
• Published date: 13 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The Torah scroll is passed to members of Women of the Wall, who collectively represent Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Judaism.

The ban on women having a Torah scroll and singing liturgical songs at the Western Wall are two of the controversial acts invoked by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation and Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, who was appointed rabbi of the Western Wall in 1995, following the death of his predecessor, the much admired and beloved Rabbi Yehuda Meir Getz.

Rabinowitz is the fourth rabbi of the Western Wall and holy sites, a quasi-diplomatic position in which he meets and greets visiting state and political dignitaries from abroad and takes them around the site.

According to a recent revelation in The Marker, the financial supplement of Haaretz, Rabinowitz charges exorbitant sums to people who want to celebrate a bar mitzvah in the Western Wall Plaza or adjacent synagogue, which are, after all, public places, and should be free of charge. Some people don't ask permission, and just dance in with a Torah scroll.

Why a Torah scroll is forbidden to the Women of the Wall defies logic. The Torah is known as the bride of the Jewish people, and at Orthodox weddings women dance with the bride. In some Orthodox congregations there is a women's minyan (prayer quorum) in which women read from the Torah and dance with the Torah.

And let's be honest – the Western Wall is not really holy. It's an outer wall, and was not part of the Temple. Any archaeologist can testify to that. Moreover, it is not an ultra-Orthodox province, in that it was captured from the Jordanians in 1967 by the Israel Defense Forces. Prior to 1948, when the country was still under British rule, men and women prayed together at the Western Wall, which was then known as the Wailing Wall.

No less important than denying a Torah scroll to female worshipers is the fact that there is no time or age limit placed on the service of the rabbi of the Western Wall. The president of the state can serve for only seven years. The president of the Supreme Court must retire at age 70. The chief rabbis of Israel can serve for only 10 years, and the general retirement age is 62 for women and 67 for men. But the rabbi of the Western Wall can remain in office indefinitely.

Meretz MK Mossi Raz, who is secular, would like to see a review of the management of the Western Wall, have limits placed on the number of years that anyone can serve as rabbi of the Western Wall and synagogues controlled by the Western...