New Prayer Site Highlights Divide Between Israel, Us Jews

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli government's decision to allow non-Orthodox Jewish prayer at Jerusalem's Western Wall is a major breakthrough for the country's long-marginalized liberal streams and their powerful supporters in the United States. [...] the compromise agreement also highlights the deep rift between the world's two largest Jewish communities over how religion should be practiced in the Jewish state, where ultra-Orthodox control is entrenched over religious life. Progressives celebrated Sunday's Cabinet vote in favor of building a new $9 million plaza for mixed-gender prayer at the Western Wall as a historic, formal recognition of the Reform and Conservative movements that dominate American Jewish life but are largely sidelined in Israel. The Orthodox religious establishment sees itself as responsible for maintaining traditions through centuries of persecution and assimilation, and it resists any inroads from liberals it often considers to be second-class Jews who ordain women and gays and are overly inclusive toward converts and interfaith marriages. Noa Sattath, head of the Israel Religious Action Center, a group that promotes religious pluralism in Israel, said she was "thrilled" about the symbolic foothold at the Western Wall, a remnant of the ancient Jewish Temple complex and the holiest site where Jews may pray. Rabbi Uri Regev, who heads the religious equality group Hiddush, said that beyond questions over its implementation, he worried the new prayer complex agreement would create a false appearance of equality and take pressure off the government to press Orthodox authorities to make more significant concessions. Rabbi Steven Wernick, chief executive of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the North American centrist movement that has ordained women for three decades, credited Netanyahu for recognizing the significance of the issue for American Jews but also noted continuing obstac