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Rabinowitz: No Woman Would be Arrested for Reciting Kaddish at the Kotel

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The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Chairman Natan Sharansky met today with Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Chairman of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation to express his shock at a letter sent by the Israeli Police. The letter stated, in part, that the police would arrest women who recite Kaddish at the Western Wall.

Rabbi Rabinowitz assured Sharansky that, contrary to the letter, no woman would be arrested for reciting Kaddish at the Western Wall. [eJP note: this reinforces the long-held belief Rabinowitz does, in fact, control the police in the Kotel plaza area; an extremely troubling thought for Israeli democracy.]

Sharansky is currently in the final stages of drafting recommendations for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to decrease the tensions and ensure that every Jew in the world can pray in the manner that they are accustomed to at Judaism’s most important national and religious site.

In recent days, Sharansky met with a number of appropriate ministers in Israel’s new government on this issue and is engaged in a last round of discussions with leading religious and public figures in Israel and the Jewish world.

Natan Sharansky said that the growing tensions at the Western Wall highlights the urgent need to find a solution. He added that “The Kotel must continue to be a symbol of unity for all Jews in the world and not a symbol of strife and discord.”

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  1. The growing tensions at the wall are strictly the result of those who are changing Hashem’s laws – the ones that are and will be in effect for now and for all time. What is sad is that these women think that they are more important than God and that their stature is one with which they don’t agree. It’s time that they woke up and realized that the future of the Jewish people in the Land of Israel might be up to them. We were kicked out once and let’s hope that because of their foolish pride it won’t happen again. The Kotel has always been a symbol of unity until these ladies began to demand their rights!!!!!

  2. The Kotel stopped being a symbol of unity the day the Western Wall Foundation decided that instead of a national treasure the Kotel (and the surrounding Plaza) was a Haredi outpost.

    Let’s see, the IDF can no longer swear in all soldiers on the plaza, only male soldiers.

    The Jewish Agency can no longer welcome olim and give them identity cards (unless they want to limit to just male olim).

    Where, Rena, is any of that in HaShem’s laws???

  3. Truly a very interesting set of circumstances. How come none of them have been mentioned til now? Now I’m really upset. As a new immigrant why wasn’t I ever asked to participate in anything at the wall? Why didn’t the Jewish Agency invite me? I didn’t even know that they did this!!!!

    Can you please tell me why when Jewish men and women go to an ashram or to a non Jewish meditation event they are more than willing to sit separately because they understand the reason for it? They don’t argue about that but only about changing Jewish law. I’ve been there and I’ve seen it.

    It’s all very interesting indeed.

  4. About three years ago (at the “request” of The Western Wall Foundation) The Jewish Agency stopped holding events on the Kotel Plaza. At the time it was well publicized. I am not familiar with a timeline for the IDF.