Woman of the Wall

When the group Women of the Wall first brought its lawsuit to permit women’s prayer at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, my daughter was 7 years old. I thought for sure that by her Bat Mitzvah, Samantha might read her portion at Judaism’s holy site with Torah yad (the ritual pointer) in hand.

But it didn’t happen. On our trip to Israel, we did go to the Wall, of course, but I could not suppress the twinge of resentment. There were the young b’nai mitzvah on the other side of the mechitzah, the ritual separation, using Torah scrolls (many of them owned by the government at taxpayer expense) that only men had access to. Meanwhile, women worshipping at their side of the wall had to mumble sotto voce into their prayer books, while the men’s voices boomed aloud.

Well, here we are 11 years later, and progress is finally being made. As Rivka Haut, one of the original members of Women of the Wall, told her young grandchildren, ages 4 and 7, last Friday night in New York, there will be bat mitzvah at the wall, maybe by the time they come of age. “It will happen,” she told me. “It’s a momentous event of their lifetime.”

You don’t have to be an Orthodox Jewish feminist to applaud last week’s decision by the Israeli Supreme Court establishing that women have the right to worship with Torah, tallit and in an audible speaking voice at Jerusalem’s Western Wall. This ruling is a major breakthrough for men and women, impacting not only women’s religious rights in Israel, but Jewish interests throughout the Diaspora. The lawsuit has been so protracted and controversial because it pushes the major hot buttons of contemporary Jewish life: Is our religious practice fixed in time or does it evolve? Is Israel the capital of Jewish civilization or a theocracy?

The court has taken its sweet time to get there, but last week the ruling made it clear: Judaism evolves. Israel must be open to all Jews. Among the victories of this suit, as Miriam Benson, a long-standing board member of the International Committee for Women of the Wall, told me, is that the court did not challenge the legal standing of a group outside Israel to be plaintiff. The interests of world Jewry in the affairs of Israel might yet be exercised in court in a wide variety of matters.

If the justices had ruled otherwise, that women could not pray at the Jewish people’s main historic shrine and that only Israeli residents could sue, the results for international Jewry would have been disastrous. When the lawsuit was first brought in 1989, the idea of a woman wearing a tallit and carrying the Torah was considered outrageous. We were at the beginnings of a Jewish women’s movement that would eventually sweep not only secular or liberal feminists but the entire Orthodox world. By the year 2000, the changes in American Orthodox practices have been dramatic.

In all but the most extreme sects, Orthodox girls have b’not mitzvah. Women’s tefillah (prayer) groups are a part of Orthodox shuls. Women wear tallitot and read from the Torah. Women’s study includes preparation for rabbinic ordination. Women speak their prayers in normal voices, no longer needing to mumble. It was only a matter of time before these changes in Orthodox custom would be reflected in Israel, reaching even the Wall.

Jews of every denomination can feel the brain-clearing joy of having the obvious ratified into law: Judaism changes.

It so happens that I worshipped last Saturday with the Chabad community in the Conejo Valley. Though I sat on the women’s side of the mechitzah, I was pleased to find that change had come even to the branch of Judaism whose garb reflects 19th century Poland. The Torah was brought to the women’s side and women were allowed to embrace it. The women sang out in their own clear voices. And a woman went up to the bimah in the middle of the service to ask a rabbi a question. She acted like she’d been there many times! And yet, during his sermon, the Chabad rabbi could not resist equating the court decision on the Western Wall with that week’s sulfurous weekly Torah portion, which warned of dire consequences to Israel if changes are made to religious custom.

A thriving Jewish community in the Conejo Valley may refuse to see that it too is evolving, but that doesn’t change the facts. As this case points out, ironies abound throughout the Jewish world. For decades, world Jewish leadership has bogged down in the tail-and-the-dog debates. Just who will save the Jewish people, Israel or America? American Jewry, too, has entertained itself over which group is “authentic”: Orthodoxy or liberal. Just who is the tail and who is the dog? Among the glories of the Women of the Wall victory is this: Judaism is not a dog but a flowering tree, perhaps the Biblical olive – fast growing, hardy, transportable. And we, the Jewish people, are the process by which the fruit becomes edible.

Marlene Adler Marks is senior columnist of The Jewish Journal. Her e-mail address is wmnsvoice@aol.com.