Bnei Akiva split over move to protest against Women of the Wall at jubilee celebrations

03/11/2013

Past and present leaders of religious Zionist youth movement come out both for and against compromise over women’s right to pray at Western Wall.

The head of Bnei Akiva schools in Israel is drawing fire for urging high-school girls in the religious Zionist educational network to join their ultra-Orthodox peers Monday morning in a protest against Women of the Wall, the pluralistic women’s prayer group, which will be holding its monthly service at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

A much larger-than-usual crowd is expect to participate in the Women of the Wall Rosh Chodesh service this month, as the group will be marking its 25th anniversary.

According to Kippa, the religious Zionist portal, Rabbi Benny Nechtailer sent a letter last week to the principals of the Bnei Akiva high schools for girls, known as Ulpanot, encouraging them to send their students to the Western Wall Monday morning to join other women there participating in a “traditional” prayer service. This would be the first time Bnei Akiva girls would be showing up en masse at a Rosh Chodesh service at the Western Wall.

In recent months, thousands of ultra-Orthodox girls have been converging on the Kotel at Rosh Chodesh − the first day of a Hebrew month − as part of an effort to crowd Women of the Wall out of the women’s prayer section on this one day of the month that they congregate there. The ultra-Orthodox strongly object to women praying out loud while wearing prayer shawls and tefillin (phylacteries), as many members of Women of the Wall do.

Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, a spokesman for the Bnei Akiva school network, said in response to a question from Haaretz that the intention was not to demonstrate against Women of the Wall, “but to show that the Kotel belongs to the entire Jewish people and not just to the extremists of Women of the Wall.”

Danny Hirschberg, secretary general of the Bnei Akiva youth movement in Israel, tried to distance himself from the initiative. “This has nothing to do with the movement but with the Ulpanot that belong the Bnei Akiva yeshiva center, which is not under our control,” he said when asked for his response. “The Bnei Akiva youth movement is not partner to this initiative.”

Before his promotion to head of the Bnei Akiva educational system, which includes a network of 60 high schools and post-high school yeshivas, Nechtailer directed the youth movement. While serving in that position, he came under attack by some of the more progressive parents of Bnei Akiva members for various initiatives taken to create greater separation between boys and girls at movement activities.

Asked for his response, Daniel Goldman, co-chairman of World Bnei Akiva, said that although the youth movement is not connected to the schools, “I think it is a bad idea.”

Ne’emanei Torah v’Avoda, a movement created by graduates of Bnei Akiva to counter growing religious extremism in the movement, noted in a letter issued Sunday to Nechtailer that recruiting students during school time to participate in public demonstrations was a blatant violation of government regulations. “It is clear to all that a Rosh Chodesh prayer service, at this specific day and time, is nothing but a form of demonstration,” wrote Shmuel Shetach, the head of the offshoot organization.

Shira Ben-Sasson Furstenberg, granddaughter of Yosef Burg − one of the founders of the National Religious Party and a long-serving member of the government and Knesset − condemned Nechtailer’s initiative on her Facebook page, saying that as a former member of Bnei Akiva, it caused her “great sadness.”

“Our movement, our community has the tremendous privilege to act as a unifying force in this country,” she wrote. “Women of the Wall are certainly a minority and their actions are certainly controversial. But they are in the midst of a process of finding a compromise that will allow for women’s prayer and egalitarian prayer in a new space at the Kotel. To my mind, this is a welcome step, and among those who’ve been behind it are leaders of our own camp.”

Women of the Wall say they expect 700 women to participate Monday morning at their service, which starts at 8 A.M., an hour later than usual. Various delegations of women from the United States have traveled to Israel especially to participate in the jubilee celebrations, including several founding members of the organization who opposed the recent decision take by the Women of the Wall board to negotiate a compromise with the government that would ultimately have them move from the women’s section, where they have been praying every month for the past 25 years, to a new egalitarian section.