The Western Wall As a National Israeli Symbol

Chapter 4 The Western Wall as a National Israeli Symbol The new reality that emerged at the Western Wall in 1967, when, for the first time, the State of Israel gained control of the site and began to oversee it, forced the state’s leaders and institutions to confront its definition. Was the Western Wall solely a Jewish holy site, as it had been for generations, or did it now also bear historical and national meaning? And, consequently, should the Wall’s vicinity become a space serving the entire Israeli and Jewish public? Or should it be dedicated exclusively to Jewish religious ritual? The post-war discussion regarding the development of the Western Wall as a national symbol touched on the tension between state and religion. In the case of the State of Israel, this became particularly complex due to the state’s self- definition as Jewish and democratic. The separation of state and religion has been the subject of ongoing debate since the state’s inception. On one hand, some of the secular public has argued that secular Jews do not wish to observe religious precepts; a modern democratic state should not coerce its citizens to observe religious laws. On the other hand, some of the religious public coun- ters that separating state and religion will lead to the loss of Israel’s character as a Jewish state. Over the years, heated arguments over religion-state rela- tions have been stirred by legislation pertaining to conversion, marriage and divorce, kashrut (Jewish dietary laws), and the character of the Sabbath in the public sphere.1 Amid the tussles playing out in Israeli society over the state’s character in recent decades, the Western Wall gained a new identity, becoming a battleground between religious and national aspirations. The Wall become a space of both battle and bonding – a place where religion and nationality were meant to blend, a symbol of the national and religious symbiosis that flourished in the wake of the Six-Day War. The present chapter addresses these topics. It explores the considerable change that occurred in the Western Wall’s unique status in the years follow- ing the Six-Day War, with the site becoming a salient Jewish and Israeli symbol. It examines the processes that cemented the Western Wall’s position as a national site that combined numerous components of Jewish identity and served as a prominent Israeli “national plaza.” In the fifty years that have elapsed since 1967, the connection between the IDF and the Western Wall has grown signifi- cantly stronger. The Paratroopers Brigade was the first to conduct ceremonies 1 Stern, State; Bar-On and Zameret, On Both Sides; Ravitzky, Religion. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.11639789004431331_006 The Western Wall as a National Israeli Symbol 129 at the site. Later, as the connection between the IDF and the Western Wall deepened, Israelis held annual Memorial Day ceremonies there, as well as swearing-in ceremonies for new IDF recruits. These rites stoked tensions with ultra-Orthodox Jews and the religious establishment (the Chief Rabbinate and the Ministry of Religions), which toiled to ensure the primacy of the Jewish religion at the site – keeping men and women separate not only at the prayer site, but also in the upper part of the plaza, where the ceremonies took place. The plaza also witnessed an increasing number of assemblies and gatherings over the years, addressing a broad range of national and religious topics. Some expressed distress and a call for Jewish-national solidarity, while others were a show of religious strength – for example, protest rallies against violations of the Sabbath and archaeological excavations. All of these developments are related, and they reflect the significant changes that occurred in the public image of the Western Wall, identifying it as a site of national import. The religious and historical contexts of the site remained intact, and were even reinforced – but they were now complemented by modern Zionist-national values and expressions. The messianic atmosphere fostered in Israel after the end of the 1967 war and the conquest of the Temple Mount, the voices calling on Jews to make pilgrimages there, and the calls to demolish the Muslim places of worship to make way for the Third Temple led Defense Minister Moshe Dayan to instruct the IDF – mere hours after the site’s capture – to return the administration of the Temple Mount to the Muslim Waqf.2 Dayan’s hope was that this act would neutralize the religious dimension that accompanied the war’s outcome, in which the State of Israel had become sovereign of an area containing numerous Muslim and Christian holy places. He feared that a religious war, if one were to break out, would mobilize the entire Muslim world against the fledg- ling state. The demolition of the Mughrabi Quarter and the creation of the plaza in its place undoubtedly made it possible for the government to deliber- ately deflect – at least to some degree – the Jewish public’s surging messianic sentiment from the Temple Mount and towards the Western Wall.3 While it did strengthen the new state’s national and religious hold on the Western Wall, the concession of Temple Mount sovereignty was significant in other ways as well: it was tied to the Arab challenge to Israeli sovereignty over both the Temple Mount and the Western Wall. The Arab world did not recognize Jewish religious and historical ties to these places – a stance that 2 Uzi Narkiss, Soldier of Jerusalem (London: Vallentine, Mitchell, 1998), 219–220; Berkovitz, The Battle, 262. 3 Schwartz, “The Return”; Cohen-Hattab and Kohn, “The Nascent Nationalization”..

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