P erhaps no phrase has been more often repeated during the recent flap over the heterodox prayer site than “Jewish unity.” Natan Sharansky used it saying “This crisis has to be solved because it’s too important for the future of our unity ” and so did the Conservative movement warning of the “existential threat… to the unity of the Jewish people….” And when then-religious affairs minister Naftali Bennett inaugurated a 450-meter platform at the site in 2013 he declared that it was to “help unify the Jewish people.”
Strange isn’t it that those splitting off and praying at their own site are seen as promoting “unity”? One can understand an argument for a separate space for heterodox worship based on appeals to pluralism or individualism. But wouldn’t a value called Jewish unity seem to militate for all Jews to pray together in the same space and in unified fashion?
The truth is that all the talk of unity masks what is one of the most unpleasant truths of the entire episode one the heterodox movements must not utter lest it explode not only their claims at the Kosel but their entire push for religious recognition in Israel too. They know only too well what their beliefs and practices are or aren’t.
And thus although they may believe their religion is valid they also must know — if they possess even a modicum of intellectual honesty — the truth of Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch’s observation that the theological chasm separating Orthodoxy from Reform is even greater than that between Protestantism and Catholicism. Although both are practiced by Jews the former two faiths are distinct religions no less than the latter pair.
