PFEFFER’S ISRAEL

THERE WAS nothing unique in last Friday’s clash at the Western Wall between the Women of the Wall group and a mob of about two thousand ultra-Orthodox men trying to prevent them from holding their monthly Rosh Chodesh prayers. It was the same scene that has recurred on the first morning of every Hebrew month for decades now. At most, it gets a brief mention on the radio bulletins and in the papers next day a few lines. However, there was one key difference this time.

The media was out in force, expecting a parliamentary punch-up. In recent months, the newly elected Labour Knesset Member Gilad Kariv, who is also a rabbi of the Reform movement, had been using his MK’s immunity to bring a Torah scroll to the wall, and then handing it over the partition to the women to use for their prayers. It was a way to circumvent Orthodox-dominated Western Wall Authority, which has a regulation forbidding people to bring their own Torah scrolls to the Kotel (though this isn’t uniformly enforced) but only provides them in the men’s section.

This time, the ultra-Orthodox MKs were also planning to show up, and block Rabbi Kariv. They had called upon their supporters to join them in preventing “the desecration”. That’s why the camera crews had shown up at seven in the morning, for the unedifying spectacle of lawmakers laying into each other at one of Judaism’s holiest sites. They were to be denied however. They weren’t aware that late on Thursday night, President Isaac Herzog had been on the phone to both sides, imploring them not to go to the Kotel in the morning and promising them to hold talks on solving the situation. They accepted and stayed away, though far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir did turn up.

On Friday, MKs for both sides con

The president had been on the phone to both sides to make peace