“A religious discotheque” – thus did the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibovitz describe theWestern Wall. A pious Jews, he considered the ceremonies there pagan rites.
Therefore I don’t get excited about the now storm raging around the wall. The orthodox want toturn it into a synagogue? Let them. They want to enact a law that will impose a penalty of sevenyears in prison on women who pray there in a Jewish prayer mantle? Well, not so long ago theywould have them stoned to death. So there’s some progress.
All this was born in sin. If I were a religious person believing in a merciful and just god, Iwould be convinced that god has cursed the place. In the words of the prophet Jesaia: “Hear thewords of the Lord: My soul hates your feasts, they are a trouble unto me, I am weary to bearthem…Ye, when you make many prayers, I will not hear, your hands are full of blood…Yourministers are companions of thieves, every one of them loves bribes and longs for money, theydo not defend the fatherless neither do they take up the cause of the widow…Wash yourself, putaway the evil of your doings from before my eyes, cease to do evil…” (Yesaya 1).
Actually, the whole matter of the Wall is very doubtful from a religious, historical point ofview. It is a remnant of the building operations of king Herod, without doubt the greatestJewish statesman of all times. Yet he was never accepted by his people because of his Edomiteorigin. People at that time were not less racist then today. Trying in vain to gain their love,he build them a magnificent temple. This building was destroyed by the Romans, when theysuppressed the great Jewish revolt, a mad enterprise of the Zealots, who rejected the wisdomof Herod. Nothing remained but a part of the outer wall supporting the site on which thestructure stood.
A holy place? For centuries it had no importance to Jews. They prayed on the Mount of Olives,facing the site of the temple. The Wall entered the holy business only many centuries later, inthe course of local religious-political bickering.
The Wall reminds me of two personal experiences. For the first time I went there in the early40s. We walked through the twisting, narrow alleys of the Old City, and suddenly – there was theWall. The alley in front of it was so narrow that we had to twist our heads back to look at it. It wasmonumental, gigantic, of unique grandeur.
The second time I went to the Old City immediately after it was conquered in 1967. I witnessedthe frightened flight of the inhabitants of the Mughrabi (Moroccan) quarter, who wereordered to get out within hours. Crying children were carrying heavy armchairs on theirbacks, old women dragged beds. A terrible sight.
Teddy Kollek destroyed this century-old quarter, which was built by pious Muslim pilgrimsfrom Morocco who decided to stay in Palestine and live next to the holy place. The holybulldozers of Kollek, the arch-settler posing as a peacenik, obliterated the quarter.
Not only was this a war crime according to the Geneva convention, but it also was a crime againstJerusalem. The destruction created a vast empty space, a kind of holy parking place, dwarfingthe Wall, which looks now like any other wall, an object of religious politicians, crazyfanatics and “Jerusalem Syndrome” types.
I don’t mind turning this place over to the orthodox, if they leave us in peace. There will be nomore state functions there. In a synagogue managed by army shirkers, there will be no moreswearing-in ceremonies for secular soldiers – ceremonies reminiscent of thepagan-nationalist ceremonies of loathsome regimes. Of course, foreign kings andpresidents will no more be dragged there and compelled to wear scull-caps. Even Ehud Barakwill no more be obliged to go there for ridiculous photo opportunities, putting between thestones slips of papers containing wishes which will not be fulfilled anyhow.
(There is a story about a person consumed by curiosity who went to the Wall in the middle of thenight to find out what people write on these slips. He found that all of them were stamped”Rejected”.)
I am ready to turn the Wall over to the orthodox. It doesn’t fit anymore the new State of Israelemerging now: A secular Israel, proud of its place as No. 2 in the world of high-tech, wantingpeace and prosperity, loathing military adventures of the Ariel Sharon type, ready forcompromises undreamed of by Ehud Barak.
In this Israel, women will be able to do what men do, whatever they want, to their hearts contentand the glory of Israel.