Shas's Kosel modesty bill was needlessly heavy-handed
IFthe Israeli election results three months ago were an earthquake, we’re now feeling the aftershocks. On the fault line between left and right, secular and religious, hardly a week goes by without fresh incident.
Last week, it was the Shas party’s turn to throw stones at leftist protesters. And that’s only partially metaphorical — the reference is to the stones of the Kosel, which has gone from being an area of consensus to an intractable irritant in Israel’s internal rift.
The “Kosel law” was brought forward on the individual initiative of two younger Shas MKs: Religious Affairs Minister Michael Malchieli and MK Uriel Buso, chair of the Knesset Health Committee. The bill’s preface sounded reasonable enough: Israel’s 1980s law regulating the holy places doesn’t apply to the Western Wall, whose status has yet to be settled over 50 years after its liberation in the Six-Day War.
The Shas MKs’ proposal aimed to rectify this and put an end to the Women of the Wall phenomenon. For years now, the Women of the Wall have shown up at the Kosel every Rosh Chodesh wrapped in talleisim and carrying sifrei Torah, in a flagrant provocation abetted by the Reform movement. The Shas lawmakers’ goal was to legislate an end this routine desecration of Judaism’s holiest site.
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