There was nothing unique in last Friday’s clash at the Western Wall between the Women of the Wall group and a mob of about two thousand ultra-Orthodox men trying to prevent them from holding their monthly Rosh Chodesh prayers. It was the same scene that has recurred on the first morning of every Hebrew month for decades now.
At most, it gets a brief mention on the radio bulletins and in the papers next day a few lines. However, there was one key difference this time.
The media was out in force, expecting a parliamentary punch-up. In recent months, the newly elected Labour Knesset Member Gilad Kariv, who is also a rabbi of the Reform movement, had been using his MK’s immunity to bring a Torah scroll to the wall, and then handing it over the partition to the women to use for their prayers.
It was a way to circumvent Orthodox-dominated Western Wall Authority, which has a regulation forbidding people to bring their own Torah scrolls to the Kotel (though this isn’t uniformly enforced) but only provides them in the men’s section.
This time, the ultra-Orthodox MKs were also planning to show up, and block Rabbi Kariv. They had called upon their supporters to join them in preventing “the desecration”. That’s why the camera crews had shown up at seven in the morning, for the unedifying spectacle of lawmakers laying into each other at one of Judaism’s holiest sites.
They were to be denied however. They weren’t aware that late on Thursday night, President Isaac Herzog had been on the phone to both sides, imploring them not to go to the Kotel in the morning and promising them to hold talks on solving the situation. They accepted and stayed away, though far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir did turn up.
On Friday, MKs for both sides congratulated President Herzog for his intervention But it had benefited only one group. The ultra-Orthodox got to keep their status-quo monopoly while the Women of the Wall were humiliated once again.
Rabbi Kariv tweeted that he would continue to work until “the Kotel Framework is fully adopted by the government”.
He probably shouldn’t rely on the president if he wants that to happen.
The power of prayer
Even if it rarely receives much attention in the Israeli media, the fight for egalitarian prayers at the Western Wall is about to become much more significant.
The matter was supposed to have been settled back in 2016, when the government and the Jewish Agency announced the “Kotel Framework”, according to which the various “progressive” Jewish groups demanding to be allowed to hold prayers at the Wall would be allocated a separate section, at the southernmost end of the ancient temple, leaving the main Kotel plaza to the Orthodox.
While the Haredi politicians originally agreed to the compromise, more hardcore elements opposed it, forcing them to renege and pressure then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to suspend the framework.
It has remained suspended ever since. Though Reform and Conservative groups do use the “Southern Kotel” routinely, it’s an unofficial arrangement and groups of Orthodox men often go there and crowd them out.
Now that the new government is in place, without any Haredi parties in its coalition, the campaign against “the Reform desecration,” and specifically against Rabbi Kariv who is a prominent member of the new coalition, has become part of the wider battle being waged by Shas and United Torah Judaism, together with the other opposition parties, to paint the government as being “anti-Judaism”. Most of the vitriol has been directed at its inclusion of Ra’am, an Islamist party. But Rabbi Kariv is becoming a target as well.
It will be interesting to see which side Israel’s various leaders take. Mr Netanyahu, now leader of the opposition, seemed to indicate his preference last week when he retweeted Shad Leader Arye Deri’s call to “come and pray with us so that God forbid the holy place isn’t desecrated”.
The fact that he originally supported the Kotel Framework has been conveniently forgotten. Anything that attacks the coalition goes.
President Herzog is trying to position himself as the great conciliator, despite knowing full well that the ultra-Orthodox side is not going to accept any compromise. In his three years as Jewish Agency chairman, he did nothing to push forward the Kotel Framework, which had been brokered originally by his predecessor at the Agency, Natan Sharansky.
He was too eager to get the votes of the Haredi parties for his candidacy as president and he wants to remain on good terms with them now, as he has plans to return to frontline politics once his seven-year term is over. He’s a status-quo politician and wants the issue to simply go away.
Most intriguing so far is the silence of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Back in 2016, he held the Diaspora Affairs portfolio and it was he, together with Mr Sharansky, who came up with the Kotel Framework. Mr Bennett is still in favour of it, and since his government is not dependent on Haredi seats, he can push it through. But the prime minister is also aware that he must choose his battles and may decide to sit this one out.
A kosher carve-up
One battle on synagogue and state that the Bennett government seems to have won, at least for now, is over the “kashrut reform”. It was one of many rather minor economic reforms voted on by the Knesset last week among the state budget laws. It was heralded by Religious Services Minister Matan Kahana as a “major breakthrough” and the Haredi parties as the “uprooting of Judaism from the holy land”. Both sides were wildly exaggerating.
Under the new law, the State Rabbinate will no longer be in charge of kashrut supervision on the local level Instead, private kashrut organisations will be allowed to issue certificates attesting to the fact that a product or a business observes the kashrut rules.
This is a blow to the standing of both the State Rabbinate and local rabbinates, which for decades have fallen under the sway of the ultra-Orthodox leadership. It means that they will have many fewer kashrut supervisor jobs to dole out. It is unlikely, however, to have much impact on the food and hospitality industries, since there are already multiple private kashrut organisations, of the various ultra-Orthodox communities, for whom the State Rabbinate’s imprimatur was never enough anyway.
Most major manufacturers, supermarket chains and large hotels are not going to move to more moderate Kashrut organisations, as they don’t want to lose the custom of the growing Haredi community, which is now about 13 percent of the population and growing.
The reform will benefit a relatively small number of restaurants and providers who want to remain kosher but don’t have many Haredi customers.
The true significance of the “Kashrut reform” isn’t in its details or rather limited impact, but the fact that an Israeli government is altering the hallowed status quo on religious matters and the Haredi leadership has apparently no influence.
The new laws also include cuts to the funding of ultra-Orthodox education networks, a removal of childcare benefits for married yeshiva students and the exemption of those over the age of 21 from military service, allowing them to leave their yeshivas and join the workforce without the threat of being drafted into the army.
None of these alone is revolutionary, but the goalposts are being moved and the Haredim are not even on the pitch.
The Bennett government is on a trajectory to make major changes to the way Israel has allowed Haredi autonomy to grow for the past 73 years. It may not go all the way. Some coalition members are concerned about their own relations with the ultra-Orthodox leadership and would consider partnering with them in the future.
Mr Bennett is concerned that he’s giving ammunition to his opposition by binding the Haredi parties even closer to Mr Netanyahu. He has yet to decide how far to go on these issues.
His position on the Western Wall dispute, if he takes one, will be an indication.
