13 years after my arrest at the Kotel, the threat to egalitarian prayer there is growing

13 years in the past, on the morning of Rosh Chodesh Adar, I used to be detained on the Kotel.

I had joined a bunch selecting to wish with the Girls of the Wall within the ladies’s part. A minyan of us, 10 ladies, had been detained by police.

My “crime” on that February day in 2013 was violating the laws of holy locations and behaving in a method that will have endangered public security. My punishment was a 30-day ban on visiting all the Western Wall plaza.

On the time, my arrest was befuddling. All I did was daven, or pray, simply as I do each day, as a rabbi serving the biggest Conservative synagogue in Canada.

Within the years since, I’ve seen police intervene with ladies’s prayer on the Kotel on a near-monthly foundation. And now, one thing is unfolding that’s past befuddling — it’s outrageous.

The Knesset’s Structure, Regulation and Justice Committee has been transferring ahead a chunk of laws that may criminalize any egalitarian prayer on the Western Wall — punishable by as much as seven years in jail — together with on the web site that has been devoted to egalitarian companies for the previous decade. Even because the governing coalition has teetered, the committee has held one listening to lately and is planning one other. Whereas it seems unlikely that the invoice might grow to be regulation earlier than elections occur this fall, and the method will cease if the governing coalition collapses, lawmakers seem like doing all they will to make egalitarian worship unlawful at Judaism’s holiest web site.

The invoice is an insult to tens of millions of Conservative, Reform and progressive Jews who’re deep supporters of Israel and have been advocating tirelessly for the Jewish state earlier than and after Oct. 7, 2023, and in the course of the warfare with Iran.

At the moment, the Kotel has a males’s part and ladies’s part, which is overseen by the haredi Orthodox Chief Rabbinate, and a close-by egalitarian part, which has been overseen by the non-Orthodox branches since 2016. The laws would switch authority of all the Kotel to the Chief Rabbinate and criminalize spiritual companies wherever on the web site that don’t conform to their requirements.

Diaspora Jews who’ve stood with Israel should stand in opposition to this outrage.

This regulation would make me unwelcome as a training Jew who begins each morning with a tallit and tefillin. It will additionally make me unwelcome as a deep supporter of the Jewish state. I’ve invested in a house in northern Israel. I put on a coronary heart on the chain round my neck with the phrases “ein li eretz acheret,” I’ve no different land. And I’ve made my love and assist particularly clear each day since Oct. 7.

After I assume again to the day I used to be arrested, it’s with disappointment. I now not really feel comfy within the ladies’s part of the Kotel. As a Jewish chief, it’s arduous for me to confess that publicly.

Now, at any time when I’m in Israel, normally just a few instances a yr, I as a substitute make my solution to the egalitarian part to daven shacharit, the morning prayers, with a bunch or squeeze in solo mincha prayers within the afternoon.

Over time, I’ve come to understand that the egalitarian part is a continuation of the identical wall and has the identical degree of holiness. Again in February, proper earlier than the present warfare started, my husband, daughter and I all stood there collectively, took pictures and acknowledged how grateful we felt that we might be collectively with out a mechitzah segregating us.

We by no means dreamed it might be our final time praying collectively there.

There are a lot of methods to be Jewish. The federal government ought to let the Orthodox management the gender-segregated sections. Depart the egalitarian part for egalitarian Jews. Those that agree ought to weigh in by becoming a member of hundreds of others who’ve signed a petition of protest to the Israeli authorities.

After my sentence ended 13 years in the past, I took to Fb and posted: ”It is extremely liberating to get up within the morning and know my sentence is over…searching for somebody to lend me a aircraft for a fast backwards and forwards flight at present.”

With the Knesset’s time period operating out, this laws could not cross the required three readings to grow to be regulation. But it surely might actually advance only one extra step and cross a primary studying, which might then permit the following Knesset to shortly cross it in its second and third readings.

If that occurs, even a aircraft journey to Israel might by no means make me really feel welcome there once more.

serves Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto, the biggest Conservative synagogue in Canada.

The views and opinions expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially mirror the views of JTA or its mum or dad firm, 70 Faces Media.