Rabbi of the Wall

Shmuel Rabinowitz must tread a delicate path while under pressure from all sides

By ROBERT SLATER
Rabbi of Western Wall, Rabbi Rabinowitz, observe vandalism (photo credit: Courtesy of Western Wall Heritage Fund)
Rabbi of Western Wall, Rabbi Rabinowitz, observe vandalism
(photo credit: Courtesy of Western Wall Heritage Fund)
Orthodox Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz remembers the years following his appointment in 1995 as rabbi of the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City as largely tranquil, with very few skirmishes among Jews over the right to pray at Judaism’s holiest site, and no violence between police and feminist worshipers. But he recalls, too, his disappointment at how neglected the Western Wall was – no shade to escape the raging sun, no restrooms nearby, and not enough chairs or prayer tables. Even without the skirmishes or tensions, the Wall had not been visitor friendly.
Today, the 43-year-old rabbi, who was only 25 when he took charge of the Wall, notes happily that the neglect has been replaced with vastly improved services for visitors.
The shade, the restrooms, the chairs and the prayer tables – they’re all there in much greater number – serving the Wall’s eight million visitors a year, a fourfold increase over the past decade. Rabinowitz also observes with great satisfaction how accessible the Wall has become to secular Jews wishing to steep themselves in Jewish tradition. For instance, the number of bar mitzvas at the Wall has risen from 3,000 a year in 2006 to 20,000 a year today. In addition, in contrast to the past, when few Israeli children visited the Wall, thousands do so today.
But the tranquility for most of the nearly 18 years during which he has administered the Wall has gone. On June 6, the day that I interviewed Rabinowitz, he sought to project a calm demeanor, but he was clearly agitated.
A few days earlier, he had received his first death threat, a note delivered to his home that made it perfectly clear what would happen to him if he permitted non-Orthodox women to pray at the Wall. In the lower right-hand corner of the note was a photo of a pistol. For the first time during his tenure, guards were posted outside his office door.
“It’s not a good thing,” the black-bearded Rabinowitz tells The Jerusalem Report, speaking of the death threat against him.
“The fact that the controversy over the Women of the Wall has escalated so much and become so extreme – I don’t feel good about that.” He clearly took the death threat seriously.
The rabbi of the Wall faces pressure from all sides. Liberal, non-Orthodox women assail him for not permitting them to pray at the site, while extremist, ultra-Orthodox groups excoriate him for acting too conciliatory toward the women, with the ultra-Orthodox journal Ha’eda going as far as to accuse him of turning the Wall into “an entertainment center, which attracts gentiles and hookers.”
Though the main message of the Western Wall is the serenity and piety that Jews can feel by approaching and praying before its ancient stones that surrounded the Second Temple, Rabinowitz ironically feels he is literally in the midst of a battlefield. “It’s very problematic,” he says. “The Wall should be a place that unites and no one should impose his or her customs on the Wall. That is a recipe for disaster.”
The feminist organization known as Women of the Wall has been holding prayer services at the Wall at the beginning of every Hebrew month, except Rosh Hashana, since 1988; its mission is to gain the right for women to wear prayer shawls, and to pray and read from the Torah collectively and out loud at the Wall. While for years they were barred from reading the Torah or wearing tefillin (phylacteries) and prayer shawls at the Wall, ritual objects that only Jewish men customarily wear, they had for the most part not been provocative (in Rabinowitz’s view), avoiding reading from the Torah or wearing the objects.
The Women of the Wall opposed a Supreme Court decision in 2003 that permitted them to hold morning prayers that precede the Torah service in the women’s section at the Wall, but required them to hold the Torah service at Robinson’s Arch, adjacent to the main praying area at the site. Only in the past year have the Women of the Wall’s continuing efforts to secure the right of non-Orthodox women to pray at the Wall in whatever style they wish led to an intensification of policeinitiated violence.
The first serious incident of violence against Women of the Wall came in October 2012, when police allegedly strip-searched its leader, Anat Hoffman, and forced her to sleep on a jail cell floor for wearing a prayer shawl and reciting the Shema at the Wall. Hoffman blamed Rabinowitz for instructing the police to engage in this alleged mistreatment, and accused him of being “drunk with power.”
The war at the Wall has made international headlines, as the feud made for a good story, pitting Jew against Jew over where and how a Jew could pray. Women of the Wall gained a triumph in late April when a Jerusalem District Court judge said that the group was not violating the law by wearing prayer shawls because the 2003 Supreme Court decision had not intended to criminalize the use of the shawls.
The Supreme Court also said that the group’s prayers in no way disturbed the peace or violated the law. Police have interpreted the Supreme Court’s decision to mean that the women’s Torah service had to be at Robinson’s Arch, but that their morning prayer service prior to the Torah reading could be in the women’s section.
As tensions mount between Rabinowitz and Women of the Wall, the players await the recommendations of a governmentappointed committee that will put forward what it hopes will be a lasting resolution to the dispute.
Given the Women of the Wall’s court victories and forceful public relations campaign, Rabinowitz knows that he cannot expunge the feminists; so he is trying to keep them, when at the Wall, from using non- Orthodox prayer style as much as possible.
Rabinowitz seemed less agitated about the group wearing tefillin and prayer shawls, or even reading from the Torah, than about its members praying in the midst of women worshipers at the Wall. “I want to see the Women of the Wall separated from the Orthodox worshipers, not on top of them,” he notes. In his view, the Women of the Wall should pray only at Robinson’s Arch.
“I am, of course, against things that are against the halakha [Jewish law],” Rabinowitz comments. “But I recognize reality. I understand that there are those who don’t behave according to Jewish tradition.
Still, people cannot simply do whatever they want here.”
Rabinowitz likens the Women of the Wall dispute to crowds of people trying to get to a street crossing all at once. “If everyone enters the street crossing at once, there will be accidents all the time. No one is saying to the Women of the Wall that they can’t pray, but they can’t just do what they want.”
On June 9, amidst fears that violence would erupt, some 300 Women of the Wall activists gathered in the women’s section at the Wall for monthly prayers. The police had arranged a barricaded space for the group, and a large number of police protected participants.
To everyone’s surprise, the event passed peacefully.
For much of his time as administrator of the Wall, Rabinowitz has remained in the shadows. Prior to the Women of the Wall controversy over the past year, he has expressed himself mostly via written statements and the books he has published on how to behave at the Wall. (For example, should notes put in the Wall be burned or buried? The rabbi opts for burial.) He seems comfortable in the shadows, knowing all too well that he is sitting on a tinderbox. He peppers his conversation with words like “sensitive” and “problematic” when describing the Wall. “If I make one small mistake,” he says, with an equanimity that he undoubtedly is not feeling, “it could ignite the entire Middle East.”
He prefers to function as a behind-thescenes player, pleased that prominent citizens turn to him for updates on the controversies within the ultra-Orthodox community. Accordingly, few recognize him when he wends his way through Old City alleys. He may be ambitious – perhaps hoping to become the Ashkenazi chief rabbi one day – but for now, he seems quite content to administer the Wall.
Delighted that Jews are visiting the Wall in increasingly larger numbers, Rabinowitz explains the reason for the upsurge. There is, he notes, a growing dissatisfaction among secular Jews that their children and grandchildren do not know how to pray, or read from the Torah. To remedy that, these secular parents and grandparents want to strengthen their connection to Judaism.
“The Wall is the easiest place for secularists to make a connection with Judaism,” he says.
“It is the least threatening.”
He notes that the ultra-Orthodox are visiting the Wall in greater numbers, too, observing that fresh crises within their community, including pressures on them to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, find work and escape from poverty, have driven them to the Wall.
It is tempting to think of Rabinowitz as just one more successful promoter, blessed with a great sense of how to woo people to his product. But he eschews that explanation for the rising popularity of the Wall. “The Wall should not be a place that you promote,” he says. “The Wall should give services and respond to what people want and need.”
While Rabinowitz presides over the kotel.
org website, he does not seem to view the site as promotion for the Wall, but merely another service.
His office rests atop the Western Wall Tunnel, just off the men’s section. He dresses Haredi-style almost all in black: black yarmulke, black suit, black tie with white dots, with a large wide-brimmed black hat resting on his desk; also on his desk are emails and other documents. If a question in our interview comes too slowly, he quickly looks over a document and signs it. His office is filled with holy books and photos of the Wall. He yawns a few times during our interview, perhaps because his father, Rabbi Chaim Yehuda Rabinowitz, had joined him for study before dawn.
He and his wife, Yael, have seven children, five girls and two boys, ages 20 to 4. He writes books that deal with Halakhic questions about etiquette at the Wall. His attempt to have two Popes follow that etiquette at the Wall caused international headlines – his request of Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI that they hide their crosses, the main symbol of Christianity, when they visit the Wall.
“A Jew,” Rabinowitz says, “should not enter a mosque wearing tefillin or a prayer shawl. So, too, a pope should not come to the Wall wearing a cross.”
He did not insist that the Popes remove their crosses before visiting the Wall, only to be discreet how they displayed them. In the end, both popes hid their crosses within their garments, John Paul II hiding his more than Benedict XVI did.
The Jerusalem-born Rabinowitz came from a Lubavitcher heritage and within his family were some of the Holy City’s most respected rabbis. He studied at the Kol Torah Lubavitcher Yeshiva in the city’s Bayit Vegan neighborhood.
Rabinowitz was quickly drawn to the Torah. “I love the Torah and religion and prayer and the connection we have with our Jewish sources,” he asserts. “I love every Jew. No one turns me off.” During his service in the IDF Rabbinate, he arranged for soldiers to visit Jerusalem in the hope they would gain greater appreciation of Judaism.
In the fall of 1995, then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and 40 leading rabbis had to choose a successor to Yehuda Meir Getz, the former rabbi of the Wall who had just died at the age of 71. Rabinowitz’s name came up though he was only 25 years old.
Even he thought he was too young to take on such a responsibility. He did have some leadership experience. A year earlier, he had been the rabbi in charge of a south Jerusalem community at Givat Hamatos. He proudly notes that he had brought Russian immigrants, Ethiopian Jews and Israelis in that community together – despite their praying in separate synagogues.
Eager to be a player in the political and religious leadership, Rabinowitz was thrilled when, during our interview, President Shimon Peres phoned him to get a comment on the latest secular-religious disputes. During their eight-minute talk, the two men exchanged political gossip on the most pressing issue, whether to draft ultra- Orthodox Torah-studying students into the IDF.
“They say,” Rabinowitz commented to Peres, “that Bibi [Prime Minister Netanyahu] is surrendering to Peres [i.e., that the prime minister accepts Peres’s view that the students should be drafted into the IDF]. “But Bibi is not surrendering to Peres.
Peres can only help Bibi. Without Peres, Bibi isn’t worth much.”
On the “sharing the burden” issue, the rabbi advised Peres to take a moderate stance.
Anyone not studying in a yeshiva should be drafted, he said, but yeshiva students should be allowed to continue with their studies and not be arrested for dodging the draft. “I don’t want to see the Military Police chasing after the Haredim to get them into the army,” he told Peres.
After ending the phone call with Peres, the rabbi gleefully proclaimed, “That was the President of Israel.”
Among the housekeeping chores that Rabinowitz and his staff take care of is the removal of thousands of notes that visitors place inside the crevices of the Wall. Twice a year, the staff collects the notes, some addressed simply to “God of Jerusalem” and bury them in the Mount of Olives cemetery opposite Jerusalem’s Old City. “We make sure no one reads them,” the rabbi insists.
“Those notes are between a person and God.”
The one slip-up came when US President Barack Obama, then a senator, visited the Wall in 2008 and deposited his own note. After Obama left the Wall, a yeshiva student took the note and leaked it to the Maariv daily, which revealed that the future president did not pray for an election victory but asked God to “give me the wisdom to do what is right and just.”
When he learned of the leak, Rabinowitz was horrified. “It was a scandal,” he recalled.
“I was deeply embarrassed.” He expressed his regret to Obama. And since that incident, all notes are collected quickly and put in a place safe from leakers.
After 18 years as administrator of the Wall, Rabbi Rabinowitz does not appear ready to throw in the towel – despite the tensions, the violence and the death threats that have intruded on the piety of the sacred site. As he ponders the guards outside his door and the tough decisions he must make every day, the rabbi appears ready and willing to take on all future challenges. 