Obviously, a division of the Kotel to reflect the modern and contrived denominations of the Jewish people is the antithesis of unity; indeed, it renders the Kotel the symbol of the disunity of Jews who cannot even pray together as one people according to traditional law and custom.
In fact, the service in the Bet Hamikdash was rigorously prescribed. It allowed for no individuality, pluralism, egalitarianism, reforms or modernization. There was one Torah for all, and that Torah had to be followed. This message was taught at the very beginning of our history when Nadav and Avihu, imbued with religious passion, brought incense “that was not commanded by God,” and lost their lives in the process. What is most critical in divine service is responding to the divine command and not catering to our own subjective religious impulses.
For sure there are certain differences in customs, and some stringencies adopted by different communities that were eschewed by others. But on most matters, including the configuration of the venue of prayer, and even the number of times we pray each day, there are no two opinions. That was uniform in Jewish life until it was infiltrated with a secular, Western value system that its proponents then presumed had to be “Jewish” simply because they adopted it.
It is also shameful that Stern looks to the precedent of the era of Ottoman and British rule when Jews were not allowed to have a mechitzah at the Kotel or even bring chairs and so men and women prayed informally without a divider. That is a precedent – when Jews lacked sovereignty over the land of Israel? Would he also ban the blowing of the Shofar as those alien governments also did?
It is pure sophistry to quote Rav Yitzchak Yosef, who opposes the Kotel reforms, as somehow supportive because he maintains that only the enclosed area for prayer at the Kotel has the status of a synagogue. And what about the rest of the Kotel – the Wall itself, rather than the plaza outside that area? Every part of the Kotel retains its sanctity and may not be used, for example, as a handball court. And by Rav Yosef’s definition, any part of the Kotel that is used for prayer has sanctity, and thus that prayer should reflect traditional Jewish norms as is befitting the place that sits in the shadow of the holiest site in the world.
Soldiers can balk and question – even the propriety of expelling innocent Jews from their homes, to no avail – but as Minister Stern himself repeatedly stated, they have no right to refuse orders. There is a chain of command. Similarly, many Israelis are chafing under the perplexing and ever-shifting Corona directives of the government and its medical advisors that are ruining people’s lives while purportedly trying to save lives, but we are expected to comply. There is a chain of command.
Why doesn’t Stern recognize the chain of command in the religious sphere? There is a Chief Rabbi – two, in fact – designated as Mara D’atra d’Eretz Yisrael, the religious authorities in the land of Israel. Are they to have no authority over what happens at the Kotel, or for that matter, over Kashrut, Conversion (Gerut), marriage and divorce? Is the mandate of Torah leaders inferior to that of military or health officials? That would only be the conclusion of people who do not accept the reality of Torah as divine, immutable and the source of our survival as a nation.
And finding rabbis, of whatever stature, who disagree with any Chief Rabbi’s opinions should carry as much weight as is afforded the sergeants and colonels who disagree with their superiors and go their own way. Generally, they are court-martialed and dismissed.
I am not Haredi nor defined by the pejorative “ultra-Orthodox,” but I do resent the recurring use of those terms to denote those who are opposed to the Kotel’s partition. Clearly they are being used on the assumption that the reader will recoil in horror and instinctively oppose whatever Haredim or the "ultra-Orthodox" support. Like all individual Jews and all groups of Jews, we have what we can learn from them and areas in which they can improve. But do not try to marginalize the issue by conveying the impression that only Haredim care about the Kotel. Such is false.
They are pluralistic, repudiating the idea that there is one objective truth. They are suspicious of religious authority. They have a concept of sin but a very narrow one, and certainly they would not let a sin cloud an otherwise sunny day. Carving out personal exemptions from Torah observance because one identifies as Modern Orthodox is as meaningful as those carved out by Jews who identify themselves as Conservative, Reform or unaffiliated.
For sure, there are many self-identified Modern Orthodox Jews who would rightly reject the aforementioned symptoms, and just see themselves as Torah Jews in a Western milieu (as Rav Aharon Rakeffet has characterized it), without any fear of or hostility towards the best of Western culture. That is unequivocally valid and we would benefit from having more such Jews in Israel.
I don’t see the Haredim or any other group of Jews as bogeymen, the measuring rod for everything that I have to be against, nor do I understand why anyone would. The barometer of our quest for perfection is the Torah itself and not how any group of Jews wishes to interpret, modify or condense it. We are witness now, for the first time in the history of Israel, to the attempt to weaken standards in every area of Jewish life – Shabbat observance, kashrut, gerut, prayer at the Kotel, etc.
One would hope that Israel’s government would try to foster closeness to Torah, which after all is our deed to the land itself, rather than discourage it and make religious observance more difficult. Hatred of Haredim, unjustified as it is and synonymous with the tendentious calls to “end the Haredi monopoly,” is not a valid reason to undermine the Torah in the land of Israel. And such will drive a deep wedge between Israel and the Torah community abroad of all levels of observance – the most faithful supporters of Israel today in the Jewish community.