A full year after the Israeli government passed into law the Western Wall agreement, cabinet ministers are suggesting we revert to British Mandatory custom.
Dear Friends,
Would you agree to be jailed for six months for Torah?
My answer is a resounding yes.
I hope you’ll join me. Well-behaved women never made history.
A coalition of extremist religious legislators, all men, is discussing a bill that would give the Western Wall rabbi absolute power over all ritual at the Kotel.
He would have the legal right to declare any ritual he doesn’t approve of as a forbidden rite, call the police, and detain the offender.
The state could then demand a sentence of up to six months for any women caught praying out loud.
This bill is part of the extremists’ response to the Supreme Court deadline coming up on Wednesday. It’s a triple-hitter. The government has until the end of the month to justify its failure to implement the Western Wall agreement we negotiated for three years. It has to explain why we do not yet have a seat at he Western Wall Heritage Foundation. And it has to give good cause for the prohibition on women’s prayer with a Torah at the Kotel.
They have taken on an impossible task: to defend blatant discrimination against women and liberal Jews. In 2017, the law won’t have it, and the people won’t have it.
They are grasping at straws. Get this: Israel’s rabbinic officials, who receive their monthly salaries from the sovereign state of Israel, claim that the same sovereign state has no standing at the Western Wall.
In fact, they’ve had to resort to reviving King George the Vth, who wrote the 1924 King’s Order-in-Council decreeing proper custom for the British Empire. His majesty ordered that no civil court had standing to rule over religious holy sites. But King George died years ago, and Benjamin Netanyahu is the prime minister who today, can and must act.
This is what I am asking you: CLICK HERE to send Prime Minister Netanyahu a petition demanding he implement the Western Wall Agreement NOW.
Lesley Sachs
Executive Director
Women of the Wall