The head of the Knesset Interior Committee called for the Israeli government to cancel the Western Wall egalitarian prayer agreement, saying, “It’s not the end of the world if American Jews get offended.”
David Amsalem of the ruling Likud party made the remarks during a committee meeting Tuesday on implementing the deal. Prior to the meeting, the committee toured the Western Wall plaza in order to better understand the current and proposed arrangements. Charedi Orthodox committee members, as well as both of Israel’s chief rabbis, did not attend the tour, reportedly because leaders of the Reform movement were participating.
At the committee session, Charedi Orthodox lawmakers left the room every time representatives of the Conservative and Reform movements spoke at the podium, according to the newspaper Haaretz.
“I don’t believe in it, and I think we have to go back to what was,” Amsalem said of the egalitarian plan during the session, Haaretz reported. “With all due respect to the Americans and American Jews, they cannot be influencing what goes on here. Let them get insulted if they want. There’s nothing wrong with that. They’re not doing us any favors.”
Under the agreement announced in January and approved by the Cabinet in a 15-5 vote, the egalitarian section at the Wall near Robinson’s Arch would be expanded and placed under the authority of a pluralist committee. The plan called for solidifying Charedi Orthodox control over the site’s traditional Orthodox section.
