In this week’s Reporters Roundtable podcast, host Josh Nathan-Kazis is joined by Forward editor Jane Eisner to discuss a compromise — wrangled by former Soviet dissident Natan Scharansky — to allow egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. Then, digital features editor Abigail Jones phones in to tell the story of how Akiva Herzfeld, a Maine…
The rabbi of the Western Wall Shmuel Rabinowitz isn’t opposed to the plan for an egalitarian prayer section there, he announced in a statement emailed to reporters yesterday. But it’s already clear that he doesn’t speak for the Haredi mainstream. Rabinowitz is Haredi, but softer on religious issues than most Haredi leaders. This is partly…
Israeli police detained five women activists on Thursday at the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s most sacred sites, for wearing prayer shawls, which Orthodox tradition sees as solely for men, a spokesman said. The incident occurred during a monthly prayer session by the Women of the Wall, a group opposed to police-enforced Orthodox controls at…
We tend to think of the Kotel, the massive white stones of the Western Wall in Jerusalem, as a scene frozen in time, ancient and immutable — men praying on one side, women on another, a strictly Orthodox synagogue on Judaism’s holiest plot of land. But the mechitzah separating men and women has been there…
American Jews and others pushing for religious pluralism at Judaism’s most accessible sacred space may have won a major advance for their cause with the new compromise proposal put forth by Natan Sharansky. But it is only now, in Israel, that the real debate begins. The Western Wall, or the Kotel, as it is known…
Natan Sharansky has presented what could be a historic proposal to add a space for egalitarian prayer to the Western Wall. Israeli religious pluralism activists, however, fear that the proposal will take years to implement and could face roadblocks that prevent it from coming to fruition. The proposal, first reported by the Forward, would expand…
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is to consider liberalising access to Judaism’s Western Wall, officials said on Wednesday, citing concern that police-enforced Orthodox controls on women worshippers alienate Jews abroad. A compromise proposed by a Netanyahu envoy would expand the Jerusalem prayer site’s plaza, where worshippers are segregated by sex in accordance with Orthodox ritual…
A dramatic offer to set up a new egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall in Jerusalem was met with a no less dramatic willingness to compromise on behalf of all the major religious leaders in the American Jewish community. In a rare show of consensus, activists on the liberal side of the Reform movement…
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