The recent High Court decision to expand and regularize the egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall (Ezrat Yisrael), has led to a predictably vocal, hysterical reaction on the part of the Haredi and Hardali leadership. Led by MK Avi Maoz, they are fielding a bill that will grant total control over the Kotel to the Chief Rabbinate, which will work on the assumption that the entire Kotel area is an Orthodox synagogue.

As is the case with most things done under the influence of adrenaline and blind hysteria, enacting this bill will be an enormous mistake, for any number of reasons.

The egalitarian section of the Kotel, which is nowhere near the better-known Kotel Plaza, has been in existence for many years now and has not bothered anyone. It is located above the Davidson Archaeological Park, which was never, ever used as an Orthodox synagogue. Hence, as noted by the late Nahum Eliezer Rabinovitch זצ”ל, one of the greatest Religious Zionist Talmudic and Halakhic authorities on the last generation, this area has no sanctity according to Jewish Law and there is no halakhic impediment to locating an egalitarian area there. (This contrasts with the front section of the extant place which, since 1967, has acquired the status of an Orthodox synagogue.)

The monthly battles between Haredim and the ‘Women of the Wall’ occur because the latter, demand the right to hold services in the front........

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