Ben Freed (he/him/Rabbi)

@courierjournal Three Jewish mothers from Louisville who have used IVF in the past or plan to in the future say Kentucky abortion law "has imposed sectarian theology on Jews." courier-journal.com/story/news/pol…

In 2013, I was working with then-Diaspora Minister @naftalibennett when we built and opened Azarat Yisrael - the egalitarian prayer plaza at the Western Wall. In the beginning, the project - done to try and heal the rift with Diaspora Jewry - was met with deep skepticism. I had the honor to give @URJPresident Rabbi Rick Jacobs his first tour of the site. It wasn’t exactly what Women of the Wall wanted or the progressive Jewish movements, but over time it became a frequently used prayer space for Jews who felt they had no place at the commonly-used Kotel. The @Netanyahu government later passed a cabinet decision formally recognizing the plaza and promising to transform it into a proper site - with a dignified entrance, physical upgrades, and a self-governing committee representing the different Jewish streams. But roughly a year later, under pressure from ultra-Orthodox parties and hardline religious Zionist voices, Netanyahu reversed the decision. Since then, the situation has steadily deteriorated. Extremist rabbis - including former Jerusalem chief rabbi Shlomo Amar - deliberately held prayer services there to signal opposition to egalitarian worship. In 2018, a falling boulder damaged the site. Despite repeated promises to repair and upgrade the area, little to nothing was done. A few days ago, the High Court ruled the plaza must be repaired, reopened for egalitarian prayer, and that the state must respect the site and allow free access to it. And yet, almost immediately, the coalition moved in the opposite direction - ministers slammed the court, vowed to fight it and even advanced a bill in the Knesset, which passed an initial vote today, that would effectively outlaw egalitarian prayer and potentially carry with it a prison sentence of up to seven years. It is impossible to ignore the cumulative message successive Netanyahu-led governments have sent to Diaspora Jewry. Jews around the world are basically being told by the Israeli gov’t that their right to pray at one of Judaism’s holiest sites is conditional, that their religious expression is unacceptable and that when coalition politics collide with Jewish unity - politics win. This is shameful and wrong and is a direct insult to most of the Jewish people. No one has a monopoly over Judaism and no one has a veto over how other Jews choose to pray. This is anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist, and it must change.

Kentucky AG opinion: Public display of Ten Commandments is constitutional lpm.org/news/2025-02-2…