The Women of the Wall (WoW) organization held their monthly Rosh Ḥodesh protest service at the women’s section of Jerusalem’s Kotel (Western Wall) plaza Thursday morning.
Roughly 40 women, many wearing kippot, t’filin, and tallitot – garb traditionally worn by Hebrew men – stood together near the separation barrier between men and women singing Hallel and reading from the Torah in a service marking the start of the new month of Tammuz.
WoW was surrounded by security guards protecting them from angry locals attempting to disrupt the event with flying chairs.
Local Jewish women attempted to silence WoW, shouting that what they were doing is “forbidden in Jewish law.” One woman shouted “What are you doing wearing a kippa?! This is not your place!”
A loudspeaker was used for the service on the men’s side to prevent the sounds of the WoW event from disturbing their daily tefillot.
WoW and their supporters tend to frame their fight as one for religious freedom and civil rights, claiming that they as Jews are discriminated against and not welcome at the Kotel due to their more egalitarian approach to Jewish ritual practice.
But the truth is that all Jews (and even most gentiles) are welcome at the Kotel. Visitors must simply respect the native way of life when they come to our holy sites just as they should respect the sacred places of any indigenous culture they visit.
All these Jewish “denominations” (itself a Christian concept) came into existence for the purpose of helping Diaspora Jews better fit into the populations and dominant cultures of their host countries without completely discarding Jewish identity.
But when we return to our homeland – where we’re the host population and our culture is the dominant culture – these Diaspora Jewish denominations (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, etc.) lose their value and run the risk of being weaponized as agents of westernization against Israeli society.
What some mistakenly assume to be a struggle over “religious freedom” at the Kotel is actually a well-funded effort to erode an indigenous people’s ancient way of life – a major front in a much broader culture war against the Hebrew character of our state.
Heavily funded efforts by foreign organizations like the New Israel Fund, Ford Foundation, and Religious Action Center to westernize Israeli society and dilute its Jewish identity have cleverly sought to misrepresent the opposition to their efforts as a small pack of Ḥaredi politicians monopolizing control over a holy site rightfully belonging to all Jews.
But the truth is that most Israelis oppose what they perceive to be offensive mock Jewish practices at our sacred places and prefer such sites be maintained by those learned in Israel’s ancient laws and customs.
It’s unfortunate that some Diaspora Jews want to disengage from the story of Israel’s rebirth in our land after nearly 2,000 years of exile simply because we won’t officially recognize their colonized assimilationist movements as a legitimate expression of our ancient culture and identity. And while these Jews are obviously free to make their own choices, I’d urge them to at least take some time to deeply examine their own people’s identity and history in order to make more informed decisions.
Diaspora Jews can either accept Israeli society for what it is, join and influence its development through aliya, or choose to disengage and separate from our people. It’s each individual’s choice to make. But what’s not acceptable is for certain groups to pump millions of dollars into campaigns to “fix” Israelis and try to force their values on a society those values don’t fit.
We’re part of a proud civilization stretching back thousands of years. We can respect our own people’s ancient folk ways without needing to conform to foreign trends.
But either way, we can rest assured that despite the millions of dollars being invested into these attacks on our culture, they will ultimately fail – largely due to the demographic and socio-cultural trajectory of Israeli society.
