In June I returned from attending the 29th International NGF in Israel – themed ‘The People & The Land’. It is in the context of exploring our connection to the Land of Israel that I express my concerns with recent events in Israel that have sparked international outrage. As a colleague of mine stated: “The religious community has once again given themselves a self-inflicted wound.”

The Western Wall, the Kotel, has been the fixation of Jewry for two thousand years. It has been the tactile makom, place of engagement, for all Jews. It was never used as a synagogue, as is clear from archaeological etchings which show a space of mixed genders and personal devotion. And the ‘Right of Return’, the ability for any Jew, who would otherwise have faced persecution by the Nazi regime, is being pigeonholed into the wants and desires of the extreme right.

These are two serious and interconnected issues that must be carefully examined by global Jewry.

When the Torah notes the deaths of Moses’ siblings, Miriam and Aaron, they are dealt with in two very different ways.

In Bamidbar 20:1 the Torah states:

“The Israelites arrived in a body at the wilderness of Zin on the first new moon, and the people stayed at Kadesh. Miriam died there and was buried there.”

While in verse 29, the Torah says:

“The whole community knew that Aaron had breathed his last. All the house of Israel bewailed Aaron thirty days.”

With the death of Miriam, we know when and where she died, and we see that the People of Israel can come to terms with it and accept it for what it is – a fact of life.

With the death of Aaron, however, there was no warning. In the text, Moses, Elazar, Aaron’s sons, and Aaron himself, walk up a mountain. Only Aaron does not return. Moses advises the people of his death, and the shock, the irrationality of it all, brings the nation to a standstill. The people mourn with sorrow and bitter tears.

When we look at these two characters, we don’t see major differences:  they were both relatives of Moses. They were both messengers, prophets, of God. Yet the responses to their deaths are so very different.

I believe there is another reason which accounts for this difference. Aaron was a rallying point for the entire people. We see this clearly in the story of the chet ha-egel, the sin of the golden calf (Shemot 32:1-2). There, he is the ‘magnet of the nation’, even during one of its greatest trials and tribulations; he is not a flawless leader; he is not necessarily a visionary, but he is there.

We see further in Pirkei Avot, 1:12 when Hillel says, “Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace, loving the creatures and bringing them closer to Torah.”

Aaron was such a unifying figure, that he is given a critical place within the central moral and ethical teachings of our faith. Be like Aaron, we are told. Go after peace and bring the people closer to it.

So we have two reasons for the differences in mourning: the very shock of the event and the central unifying role Aaron played for the nation.

The backtracking by the Government of the State of Israel of the Kotel proposal to create a pluralist prayer space, along with the decision to further centralise the Chief Rabbinate’s power around the topic of conversion has caused the majority of World Jewry, and for the first time, the Jewish Agency, to rally together in condemnation of a narrow minded policy that, in reality, benefits no one.

For the first time in the history of the Jewish Agency, its emissaries are being used as conduits of the diaspora Jewish community towards the government of Israel. Natan Sharansky, the head of the Jewish Agency, told some 200 Jewish Agency shlichim that they must take immediate action to listen to expressions of anger and criticism that are being heard in many Jewish communities and bring them to the attention of public figures and politicians in Israel.

But let’s look at the two issues separately.

First the Kotel.

It must be noted that according to halacha, Jewish law,  the Kotel is not a synagogue. It never has been and it never should be, but according to Israeli law it is;  but we mustn’t allow Jewish law to be used as a beating stick.

A.M. Luncz, Y.Y. Yehudah, and Mordechai Hacohen have already assembled most of the sources about prayers at the Kotel from 1520 – when the Kotel became a popular Jewish prayer spot – to 1967.  It is clear from the testimony of Luncz and Yehudah, who lived in Jerusalem from 1869-1918 and 1863-1941 respectively, and from numerous photographs and paintings, that women visited the Kotel on a regular basis, that women frequently made up the majority of worshippers at the Kotel, and that there was no permanent mehitzah next to the Kotel until 1948, when the Kotel and the Old City were captured by the Jordanians.

The Kotel is meant to be a place for everyone and should, in my view, shirk off its synagogue status by Israeli law, and again act as the unifying makom that it is.

Second, the Conversion Bill.

In recent weeks, the Knesset advanced a bill that would guarantee the Israeli Chief Rabbinate the sole power of determining who is Jewish, not just for marriages and births, but even for the right of return, through Israeli based conversions.

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, stated;

“This would set back the current reality and make all matters of conversion subject to the furthest right of the ultra-Orthodox world. It would begin the slow erosion of the Law of Return and affect the validity of conversion throughout the Jewish world.”

It is imperative to realise that this does not just affect those who are not Orthodox, obviously the largest percentage of Jews, but could even have the domino effect of invalidating conversions performed by an Orthodox Beit Din in the diaspora. We have seen such issues play out all too commonly over the past several years with the invalidation of several conversions by leading Orthodox Rabbis in the USA.

It is here that the Israeli Government has opportunistically, and brazenly, shrugged off its mandate of being the protector of world Jewry.

Rabbi Mark Dratch writes that according to the Talmudic sage R. Tzaddok, a Jew, even one who commits the most egregious of sins, idolatry, fulfills the “essence of Judaism” as long as he identifies as a Jew.

Is this Rabbinate so brazen that they believe they are greater than the Talmudic Sages?

Chief Sephardic Rabbi Ben Zion Meir Chai Uzzi’el, the first of the British Mandate and Israel, argues that although patrilineal Jews may not be halachically Jewish, zera Yisrael hem, they have Jewish ancestry and thus particular care must be taken not to alienate them from torat Yisrael u-mi-kerev ha-Yahadut le-olam, the Jewish religion and the Jewish people.

Is this Rabbinate so brazen that they believe they are greater than the very founders of the Rabbinate?

Today, Jewish people around the world are in mourning for two reasons: the very shock of it all, and because this goes against, in my opinion, the rallying call of the Jewish people. To be ohev shalom v’rodef shalom. To ‘love peace, and pursue it’. To love our people, pursue our people, and bring us all closer to the source.

The Nahum Goldmann Network is a place that embodies the values of that last sentence in a very unique way. The Network prides itself on diversity. We pride ourselves on coming together, on creating a safe place for dialogue, where we can discuss the issues of our people, while also being friends with one another. We must ensure we continue to espouse these views and nurture these ideals, despite those who would try to place road blocks in our way.

We are in precarious times, yet for me this is one of the first instances that there has been near unanimous voice in affirming the notion of Jewish peoplehood and the sanctity of providing for the people and their spiritual needs in our most Holy land.

In Jerusalem in 1989, Rabbi David Hartman z”l, wrote an open letter to a Reform rabbi in which he stated that “the fight for pluralism in Israel does not require Orthodox, Reform or Conservative Jews to compromise their appreciation of Halakhah and Torah. It does mean that no group may use the instruments of the state to impose its own interpretation of Judaism on the entire society.”

Here we are seeing the will of the few, being imposed on the many. The fundamentalist armies are marching, and the Jewish people is breaking because of them.

We must ask ourselves: are we going to be like the followers of Aaron? Are we going to love peace and pursue it? Are we going to bring those who are not necessarily like us closer to the source? And more importantly, are we going to stand up and push others to follow this most sacred example?

Alon Meltzer is the rabbi of the ACT Jewish Community in Canberra, Australia.