A Solution, Not a Compromise

Several quick thoughts on the Women of the Wall controversy.

First, it is indeed appropriate to relegate the Women of the Wall to pray at an archaeological site. Left alone, they will end up as a relic of the past, to be studied in the same league as Anan, Spinoza, Mendelsohn and Frank — because bucking millennia of halachah and Jewish tradition puts you on the infamous list along with the Babylonians, Medeans, Hellenists and ancient Romans.

Second, the choice before the chareidi community is not between granting legitimacy to a group so clearly out of sync with Yiddishkeit, or spending precious political capital on a fight foisted upon us by the secularists. It is indisputable that no person or entity has the right to cede the Torah’s authority on that. Nor is that a topic for debate. The question here is, do we fight the Israeli government’s decision to give the women a place away from the Wall during a time when such serious matters as the right of yeshivah bachurim to learn and deep cuts to social programs are on the table? Or do we acquiesce to a distasteful but workable accommodation?

Third, the so-called Women of the Wall may be adept at attracting attention to their agenda, but they hardly consist of more than a few dozen people. Their message is amplified by a media who use them to attack the religious, as they use a slew of other organizations whose raison d’etre is to vilify a range of Orthodox groups and causes.

The way to fight this is not by playing into their hands by providing a media spectacle, but by taking away their oxygen, the attention that feeds their outsized media role.

A respected person I’m proud to call a friend told me that a speech of his was once used as a voiceover for an anti-religious video. He refused to sue them, he said, because “that attention is exactly what they want.”

I agree. Orthodoxy has proven reluctant to publicly condemn extremists in our ranks, such as those using Holocaust imagery to protest Israel’s government or those who violently espouse their religious views in Beit Shemesh. That tactic works — except when it explodes worldwide and we’re accused of sweeping problems under the rug.

Why not utilize the same method with the Women of the Wall? Consigning them to an unobtrusive corner — out of sight, out of hearing range — would have the effect of starving them of their media sponsors.

Agree to the solution. Doing so would decimate their membership as well.

This article appeared in print on page D43 of the April 17th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.