Hundreds of members of the Reform and Conservative movements from Israel and the United States arrived on Friday morning at the Kotel plaza for the Rosh Chodesh Adar B prayer. They were met with enormous resistance from mostly Haredi Jews, including an estimated ten thousand seminary women who followed the instructions of two leaders of the Haredi Lithuanian public, Rabbis Chaim Kanievsky and Gershon Edelstein, to protest the Reform and Conservative presence. Large police forces separated the two parties of obviously God-loving Jews.
The Reform prayer was held in the presence of the President of the Reform Movement in the United States, Rick Jacobs, who is on a visit to Israel.
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett met with the leaders of the Reform movement in Israel and the Diaspora and stressed the need to allow the Reform members to enjoy equality in their prayer at the Kotel plaza, “the remains of our Temple.”
Just a reminder: the remains of our Temple are several yards up from the Kotel plaza, and Jews up there still have to struggle every day for their right to equality in prayer, but that’s not anything that seemed to bother Bennett or his Reform guests.
