Sees a problem

In an interview with reporter Jeremy Sharon, Rabbi Yoel BinNun (“On the Chief Rabbinate, the Kotel, the prophets and social justice,” (September 20) suggests a solution to the demand of the Reform and Conservative streams of Judaism for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall.

His solution is that non-Orthodox services take place in the upper Western Wall plaza, behind the men’s and women’s prayer sections. As reporter Sharon writes: “This area was never a synagogue or place of prayer... having been the site of the residential Arab Mughrabi Quarter before 1967... therefore there would be no problem in allowing egalitarian prayer there.”

I see a problem. While historically true, the plaza was created to enlarge the narrow 30-by-4-meter alley that was the Kotel courtyard, not to supplant it or create a second plaza. In fact, Rabbi Bin-Nun’s mentor, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook, as chief Ashkenazi rabbi, was very much involved during the 1920s in trying to purchase Arab homes there so that the Kotel, until the Temple was rebuilt, would grow to a large, impressive prayer area. I doubt he would have approved of mixed-prayer services.

If the Wall is indeed held in deep respect as a religious site by non-Orthodoxy, what difference does it make where they pray as long as they are facing the Wall? (In the 9th through the 11th centuries, Jews prayed at the Eastern Wall and later walked around the Temple Mount, stopping at various gates to recite psalms.)

If the location is sacred to them only because a secular state sacralized it, the issue is quite different, perhaps one of recognition by the state of a religiosity that is non-Orthodox. I fear that being, so to say, “in the back of the bus” will not satisfy their demands. YISRAEL MEDAD Shiloh