On Walls and Open Spaces

‘Ha’r’sha’im yashmid!’, the middle-aged Hareidi woman hissed at us, and I immediately caught the reference. ‘May the wicked be destroyed!’

I stood huddled in my light coat on a cool Jerusalem morning as I heard her cite the cruellest part of Psalm 145. Underneath my coat, I wore my trusty tallit, white wool with black stripes, the tzitzit tied together with tekhelet, their blue thread. Wrapped around my arm and adorning my head were my tefillin, the black leather supple with use. Each of these sacred objects represented a world to me. The tallit I had shyly purchased in a small Dutch Judaica shop (long gone since), one of the few young women to do so. The tekhelet were a gift from an Israeli friend who would end up becoming a cantor. The tefillin I had purchased on a prior visit to Israel with a male friend who clandestinely took me to Me’ah She’arim to get ‘the best deal’. More importantly than the origin of each of these was their memory and meaning. It was the 2010’s and I was a rabbinical student nearing the end of my studies. I felt religiously empowered and spiritually connected when I prayed with my tallit and tefillin. Years of prayer, tears and hopes had been poured into them. They imbued my davening (Jewish prayers) with a quiet dignity that transcended merely being an egalitarian statement. They were me.

I wore my tallit and tefillin in the oddest of places; next to a kind Muslim in prayer at the interfaith chapel at the Amsterdam airport, on the cusp of the Arctic Circle on an adventurous vacation in Finland, on a sun-drenched terrace at my mother’s house in Spain. In a rebuilt East Berlin, defying history, in minyanim in New York, London, Los Angeles.  After having passed the Beit Din while receiving my first Aliyah and on the mornings of my wedding and my ordination. I had shlepped them across oceans and continents. It felt strange to be in the holiest place on earth and having to hide them underneath my coat. The paradox stung.

The Kotel haMa’aravi, the Western Wall, glowed softly in the subdued morning light. Our group, ‘HaNashot haKotel’, the Women of the Wall, closed ranks, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. A brave woman held tightly onto our small Torah scroll. The Ultra-Orthodox women we shared our side of the mechitzah with glowered and snarled at us. As the law on egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall kept changing throughout the decades, sometimes more threatening and sometimes more accommodating, I didn’t know what to expect. At that moment it was said that to wear a tallit and tefillin at the Kotel could be punished by seven years of imprisonment. Here I was, a Jew, in the Jewish State, committing an illegal act. I felt indignation and terror. All I could do was find steadfastness in chanting the liturgy and in the prayerful solidarity with my sisters.

In light of recent developments, looking back on this experience makes me almost wistful. Back then, attending the Rosh Chodesh prayer group with Women of the Wall was the most uncomfortable prayer experience I ever had. Now, I will probably never get that chance again. A bill has passed in the Israeli Knesset (Parliament) banning egalitarian prayer at the Kotel, both in its segregated spaces as well as at the ‘Ezrat Yisrael’ site, the small, gender-mixed plaza off to the side where non-Orthodox Jews had been relegated to.

This past week, as the imminent threat – then the actualization – of the bill became clear, my social media feed as well as my work email lit up with righteous indignation. Many friends, peers and colleagues, as well as the organizations that represent American Liberal Judaism, poured out their hearts in shock. This has been a losing battle across decades and while the current outcome is a worst-case scenario, I don’t think many of us were surprised. The denominations issued their condemnations. Colleagues shared photos of them praying at the Wall accompanied by impassioned pleas to restore egalitarianism to a place that should be holy and accessible to the entire Jewish people. For those Jews who are devoted to both egalitarian Judaism and Zionism, the ruling came as a sucker punch. To many of my friends, to be stripped off the Kotel ha’Ma’aravi is to rip out the heart of Jewish time and space.

I certainly share a lot of that experience, but perhaps I experience the heaviness of this moment somewhat differently. For many years, the far right and ultra-orthodox factions in the Knesset, often abetted by Prime Minister Netanyahu for political expediency, have toyed with both the spirituality and the status of non-Orthodox Jewry. Proposal after proposal have been pushed to restrict or revoke the Law of Return for non-Orthodox converts to Judaism, to reduce or minimize funding, access and presence of non-Orthodox Judaism in Israel or to turn the Western Wall into an Ultra-Orthodox synagogue. In a grotesque merging of the forbidding judgment of the synagogue and the uncompromising power of the state, to pray as I have prayed for decades in my life, means now to risk imprisonment of up to seven years.

I applaud those American Jews – and our Israeli rabbinic colleagues – who are fighting hard to challenge and reverse this ruling. It is too early to know what will come of this and I am not a political analyst of Israeli parliamentarian politics. (I can barely keep up with the Dutch ones!) I am loathe to predict what will come of these ‘hot’ developments. All I know is that a lot of Jews around the world are hurting right now. They see themselves represented less and less by a government that is becoming more and more autocratic, theocratic and supremacist.

Each of us determines our own connection to Israel. Rich, loving, fraught, tense, close, distant, angry, proud, hopeful… pick an adjective. For those of us who care deeply about the Zionist vision, a feeling of betrayal wells up in our chest. For decades, and especially these last two-and-a-half years, American supporters of Israel have stood in solidarity, even and especially if that solidarity is rooted in brave and loving criticism. For those of us who do not identify as Zionists, we feel a predictable sense of hurt and disappointment. We look at the moral trajectory of the Israeli state, at the destruction of Gaza, the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank and are not surprised that a far-right coalition that harms Palestinians would eventually come for the Jews who are not like them.

I think it is important to acknowledge the possibility of this range of emotions and this spectrum of connections. Some of us have friends and family and core spiritual experiences in Israel; some of us do not. Some of us are more optimistic about the arc of Israel’s history bending towards justice; some of us hold more fear and concern. Some of us are invested or active in Jewish institutions fighting the good fight for a better Israel; some of us align in solidarity with Palestinians to attain justice. All of us, I hope, wish for a better future for all the peoples between the river and the sea; for a world of pluralism, liberal democracy and religious freedom, no matter how we define or label that.

Each of us has to find our own way to voice our perspectives and passions. We as a synagogue have been and will be committed to an expansive and pluralist vision to do so. We feel the tensions and worries, we sit with our grief and anger, we try to revive our hope and love—but most of all, we keep talking to each other. There is much to explore and think about; about the power of statehood, the authority of religion, the seductiveness of supremacy, the call to justice, the vision of better days: whether that is at the smooth golden stones of Judaism’s most sacred and ancient site or right here today, among America’s amber waves of grain.

As for me? The first time I visited Israel and Palestine, I was 17 years old. The last time, I was 35 years old and six months pregnant with my oldest who will be Bar Mitzvah soon. I always promised my children that I would take them, one day. To show them the beauty of the land and its peoples; to walk with them across the flagstones of the Kotel Plaza, to invite them to insert their own wishes among the cracks of the Wall. To point out the glorious golden gleam of the Dome of the Rock, to chant the Sh’ma and hear the Adhaan and the resonant peal of church bells. To pray, all of us, each in our own tongue and according to our own story, to the God of Abraham and Sarah, in a vision of shared humanity and coexistence, just as the Prophets dreamed.

I do not know if that vision will come to pass, but I hold tightly to it, like tzitzit coiled between my fingers.