Natan Sharansky Vows Women Won’t Be Charged for Kaddish at Western Wall
Image by getty images
Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky met Thursday with Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, chairman of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, to express his shock at a letter sent by police warning that women would be arrested for reciting the Kaddish mourner’s prayer at the Western Wall.
“The Kotel must continue to be a symbol of unity for all Jews in the world and not a symbol of strife and discord,” Sharansky told Rabinowitz.
Rabinowitz, whose organization oversees the Western Wall, assured Sharansky in their conversation that no women would be arrested for reciting Kaddish at the Western Wall.
The letter warning women that they were prohibited from reciting the Kaddish was sent by Jerusalem Police Chief Yossi Pariente to Anat Hoffman, chairwoman of Women of the Wall, the organization that holds a monthly prayer service at the wall.
Sharansky is in the final stages of drafting recommendations for a compromise to resolve growing tensions over prayer at the wall. The recommendations, his office said, are meant to ensure “that every Jew in the world can pray in the manner that they are accustomed to at Judaism’s most important national and religious site.”
For more, go to Haaretz
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
