The new plan to create a larger, official egalitarian space at the Western Wall is a compromise of a compromise. In all the celebration, we can’t lose sight of that. Those who believe in promoting and protecting pluralistic Judaism in Israel have every right to proclaim victory — a rare emotion after years of increasingly hegemonic control by the ultra-Orthodox. But it’s a victory tempered by what was relinquished and dependent on what comes next.
It’s been nearly two years since Natan Sharansky, head of the Jewish Agency and de facto convener of the Jewish Diaspora, unveiled a plan that would expand the existing, tiny and well-hidden egalitarian prayer space at Robinson’s Arch into a plaza equal in size and stature to the traditional area known as the Kotel, which has been administered by ever more zealous Haredi authorities.
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