God Deserves Better at the Kotel

By Austin Colm ‘25
The doctrine of “separate but equal,” a demonstrably false idea once utilized to justify segregation in the United States, has now worked its way into modern Judaism. 

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So many Jewish sects in the U.S. allow both men and women to read Torah and lead a congregation, and let them pray together without any gender separation. However, in Israel these traditions appear less common, with biblical-style religious inequality between men and women being the norm most notably at the Kotel.
Orthodox Jews established gender separation at the Western Wall with a mechitza in the late 1960s, immediately after the Kotel was retaken during the Six-Day War. In 2001, the mechitza’s permanence was reaffirmed in an amendment to the Holy Sites Law of 1967, along with a ban on women wearing tallit or tefillin, blowing shofar or chanting Torah. The Kotel’s mechitza unfairly denies women the right to fulfill these mitzvot at Judaism’s holiest site, and by giving most of the wall’s room to men, shoves them into a small area to pray.
Anat Hoffman, Chairperson of Women of the Wall, simplified this inequality into four T’s: tefillin, tefillah, tallit, and Torah. “We want to do all these four activities at the women's section of the western wall,” she said. She further stated that “Women of the Wall’s mission includes both gender equality and religious pluralism.”
GOA teacher Dr. Lasser weighed in, saying that, “The more participation you have in davening, the better it is. Our tradition will last longer and it's not just [about] inclusivity, our tradition works.” 
Dr. Lasser added that women were always vital to our religion and that there were special prayer books for them, with Beit Yaakov schools being established so women could learn Torah and pass down traditions maternally.
Elyse Frishman, Rabbi Emeritus at Barnert Temple (Congregation B'nai Jeshurun) in Franklin Lakes, New Jersey, explained to Odyssey Impact, a nonprofit interfaith agency, that the ban on women wearing tallitot and the mechitza’s existence is an issue of religious freedom and that the Rabanate needs to understand there are multiple pathways to God.
Frishman shared a story about routinely passing through security at the Kotel when a police officer suddenly asked the Rabbi to remove her Tallit. She then tried to explain to the officer that there was no Jewish law prohibiting women from wearing prayer shawls.
“They took my passport and then they fingerprinted me,” Rabbi Frishman said. “They took my photograph and they wanted me to sign a statement that I knew why I was being detained and I understood, and I refused.”
While the Rabbi’s religious freedoms were undoubtedly violated, GOA’s Rabbi Bockman gave a different take, saying that the “Mechitza is not wrong or evil. It is simply not for everybody. The Talmud tells us that during Sukkot in the Jerusalem Temple, they would construct a special gallery, an upper deck, for women, because the festive atmosphere was too joyous and heady, and took away from the focus on where it should have been: God!”
However, women at the Kotel still have little space to pray and are routinely denied their right to personal religious expression. At the egalitarian minyan, where women can wear a tallis or tefillin, lead a service and read Torah, they are not able to touch the wall or even go near it. The prayer space is on a platform over thirty feet from the Kotel. Women who want the same ritual experience as men have to gaze solemnly at the Kotel, instead of being able to touch and feel its thousands-of-years-old stones.
It is a shame that equality is hindered at the holiest landmark for the Jewish People and that little is being done about it. Rabbi Bockman said it best, “God deserves better from us!”

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