Editor’s Note: There was a powerful article by Nicole Zimmerman in Ha’aretz on Thursday critiquing American Jews for getting so upset about the rights of non-orthodox Jews to pray at the Western Wall (the Kotel) while never getting upset in this powerful way about the ongoing 50 years of oppression of Palestinians.
June 30th, 2017
As Shabbat approaches at the end of this very difficult week, the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) expresses its continued outrage at the shortsighted, hostile, and divisive decision of the Israeli government to rescind the agreed upon plan for the development of an egalitarian, pluralistic worship space at the Kotel in Jerusalem. We also oppose, in the strongest possible terms, the Conversion Bill now under consideration, which would essentially hand absolute control of conversions to the ultra-orthodox who do not recognize any conversions performed by other Jewish denominations, including Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Renewal.