Conservative rabbis, lay leaders demand that prime minister honor Western Wall agreement

A letter signed by nearly 600 Conservative rabbis and lay leaders decries the freezing of the Western Wall agreement and a conversion proposal in the Knesset.

The letter expresses the signers’ “dismay, anger and sense of betrayal” over both incidents which took place in late June and remain unresolved.

The letter addressed to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hand-delivered late last week to Dani Dayan, consul-general of Israel in New York, by Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, and Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, CEO of the Rabbinical Assembly.

“Mr. Prime Minister, we are Zionists,” the letter reads. “You must understand, however, that in the 21st century we find it unconscionable that Israel, the Jewish state, is the only democratic state in the world in which not all Jews are recognized or supported equally under the law or in the public square.”

The letter calls for an end to the Chief Rabbinate’s monopoly over religious affairs. It demands that Netanyahu “immediately implement” the Western Wall agreement to expand and upgrade the egalitarian prayer section at the southern end of the Western Wall and put it on equal footing with the single-sex sections run by Orthodox authorities.

Under the agreement, the egalitarian section was to be run by a special committee with no input from the Chief Rabbinate.

The rabbis also call on Netanyahu to insure that any new conversion law does not give the Orthodox-controlled rabbinate control over determining who is a Jew.

The letter was signed by 597 Conservative rabbis and leaders, representing 417 institutions including 385 North American Conservative Jewish congregations.

“The time has come for Israel to embrace Jewish pluralism as a positive value to ensure the Jewishness of the Jewish state and its democratic values,” the letter said. (JTA)