San Diego (special) -- Rabbi Moshe Levin has returned to San Diego angered over the way the Israeli government treated him and 200 other Conservative Jewish men and women who tried to pray together on Tisha B'Av within sight of the Kotel.

The rabbi said that the services, begun with police permission on the plaza (behind the cordons) where tourists congregate to watch the activity at the Kotel, was interrupted after ten minutes on the demand of a representative of Israel's Ministry of Religion.

Even though that plaza has been the site of countless bar and bat mitzvahs and other mixed services led by non-Orthodox rabbis over the years, the ministry's representative, Oded Viner, said the Tisha B'Av services were illegal because they were "not in accordance with the custom of the place," Levin said.

Thereupon police officers, who previously had led the Conservative Jews to that spot, suddenly began to herd the Conservative Jews off the plaza and down a steep hill to a spot that was outside the gates of the Old City. Originally the police had been on hand to protect the Conservative Jews against any possible violence such as had occurred at the Kotel on Shavuot when Orthodox Jews threw bags of excrement at men and women who had tried to worship together. When the police turned on the worshipers on Tisha B'Av, "people in our group started screaming and yelling, 'Stop pushing us! What is going on?'" related Levin, spiritual leader

BACK FROM KOTEL--Rabbi Moshe Levin of  Congregation Beth El shows coverage in Israeli  newspapers about the incident on Tisha B'Av when Israeli police drove away Conservative Jews who  wanted to worship near the Kotel.

of Congregation Beth El in La Jolla. "We had first thought it was the haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) who were disturbing us but there were only a few young haredim who had even noticed that we were there, and were shouting epitehts. It was the police who were pushing us."

As the police pushed the crowd back, haredim who were entering the plaza asked what was occurring and the others answered, "'Reformim! Reformim!' and then these haredim would join them to jeer us," Levin said.

Levin said Reformim is a description used by the haredim to describe any non-Orthodox Jew, be they Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform or members of smaller movements. 

"It is a code word amongs the Orthodox, a code word for the movement whose rabbis perform intermarriages and who do conversions without mikvah and circumcision and actually encourage assimilation rather than stop it," Levin added. 

"That is the stereotype of Reform Judaism and that is what they were shouting at us," he said.

Levin said while the police were herding the Conservatives away from the area, " a few people tripped and fell." 

"Someone actually fell off this incline into a pretty deep ditch and then climbed out," he added. "In the meantime television cameras, photograpehrs and journalists started to rush over to us and take pictures of what was going on, and we kept shouting to the police--by this time we had realized it was not the haredim who were pushing us out but the police by the direction of the Ministry of Religion.

"We kept shouting to them, 'Why are you doing this? We are Jews! We have a right to pray here!' Many of the people in the group were Israeli born or raised and were saying things like 'I fought in the Army for this place; how dare you evict me from here?', 'This is mine as much as it belongs to them!' and things like that," Levin said.

"The police were completely unreceptive. They were just following orders and their orders were to get us out of the Old City. When they succeeded in pushing us all the way out, our group reassembled in a little area facing the wall of the Old City itself, not the Kotel, and we sat there and we continued our service and we chanted the Book of Eicha (Lamentations) and it was remarkably the most beautiful and meaningful Eicha service or Tisha B'Av service I ever had been at."

Tisha B'Av commemorates various historic tragedies that have befallen the Jewish people, including the destruction of the First and Second Temples. The Kotel, or Western Wall, is a remnant of the retaining walls that surrounded the Temple grounds.

Levin said all but 10 of the 200 Conservatives who sought to pray were Israelis, and that about 100 were women. Besides himself, other non Israelis in the crowd included Rabbi Terry Netter of Temple Beth Am of Los Angeles; Rabbi Joel Myers, executive director of the Rabbinical Assembly (the organization of Conservative Rabbis), and Rabbi Andy Sacks, executive director of the Rabbinical Assembly of Israel.

Levin said inasmuch as Sacks had obtained permission for the mixed service in the plaza, the treatment the group received at the hands of the police was shocking.

"My reactions were very emotional," Levin said. "I was experiencing for the first time in my life being on the 'wrong side' of a police line -- being among the people the police were trying to get rid of rather than protect.

"And that it was Israeli police who had been ordered to behave this way to fellow Jews -- in particular to a most legitimate group of Jews, including so many rabbis who had nothing but the intention of conducting a dignified service wherein men and women could participate equally!"

The Conservative rabbi said his feelings were "shock, dismay, tremendous disappointment and a bit of a feeling of despair realizing how far from legitimacy the non-Orthodox branches of Judaism are in Israel, and how big that struggle is."

Levin said that complaints were filed with the Ministry of Police over the way the matter was handled. Additionally, he said, a court suit was initiated to challenge the Ministry of Religion's contention that mixed services violate "the custom of the place."

He said Sacks has asked non-Orthodox rabbis to help him document the many mixed services that have been held on the plaza behind the cordons leading to what are now Orthodox prayer areas at the Kotel.

Further, said Levin, evidence is being collected from photographs and from historical art work that shows that the institution of a mehitza (a barrier to divide the genders at prayer) is a relatively new phenomenon, dating back only to 1969. Before then, Levin said, men and women could and did pray at the Kotel together.

The rabbi said the incident reinforced his determination to encourage non Orthodox Jews to earmark their financial contributions to Israel via the United Jewish Federation to those institutions which support pluralism.

He also said some consideration should be given to a proposal that the newly discovered Southern Wall be set aside for non-Orthodox services, while the Western Wall is retained for Orthodox services. When San Diego's "mega-mission" traveled to Israel in 1995, services were held at the site of the Southern Wall, he said.

While such a compromise is theoretically possible, Levin said he does not endorse prohibiting non-Orthodox services at the Western Wall. He explained that he does not want to run afoul of Talmudic reasoning--as expressed in the tractate Baba Matzi'ah which tells how a case should be decided when two persons argue over ownership of the same garment.

If both say they found it first, then the court will sell the garment and divide the proceeds in half, Levin said. But if one says he found it first, while the other says they found it at the same time, then the Talmud says "there is disagreement on only half the garment because both parties agree that one half the garment belongs to the first person," Levin explained. Under such reasoning, only the second half should be divided.

Levin said he fears Orthodox would point to the precedent of Baba Matzi'ah to claim that the "half" of the retaining walls that is the Kotel should therefore be theirs, and that only the half that is the southern wall should be considered in any court action.

The Conservative rabbi said that it was not Orthodox who liberated the Kotel from the Arabs during the Six Day War, but rather was the Army of Israel made up of Jews of every denomination.

He said Orthodox are using their political clout within Israel's Knesset to advance a law that would say that any area within sight of the Kotel must be considered as governed by Orthodox custom.