A Call to Revolt, 90 Years On

Originally published in the Jerusalem Post Magazine, September 25, 2020

A call to revolt, 90 years on

By YISRAEL MEDAD   SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 

Yom Kippur 5691 fell on a Thursday – October 2, 1930. The next day’s edition of The Palestine Bulletin, the forerunner of this newspaper, informed its readers on page one that “an incident took place last evening when a young Jewish enthusiast desired to have the ram’s horn blown contrary to the temporary regulations issued last year.... Mr. [Julius] Jacobs argued with the youth and tried to persuade him to visit the synagogue nearby.... This he refused to do, and he was accordingly placed under arrest. One hour later he was released.” But let us go back two years to a previous Yom Kippur, which fell on September 24, 1928, to understand the event.

According to a memorandum by Leopold H. Amery, the colonial secretary, issued on November 19, titled “The Western or Wailing Wall in Jerusalem,” what happened was that without “prior consultation with the proper officers of government as to the arrangements for the services at the Wall,” Jews had affixed a mechitza (partition) to the pavement adjoining the Wall, and, among “other innovations,” additional petrol lamps, a number of mats and an ark “much larger than was customary” were brought to the site.

Incidentally, the mechitza itself was put up by the Radzymin Rebbe, Aharon Menachem Mendel Gutterman (1860-1934), head of the Meir Baal Haness charity, who was visiting at the time.

Called to the area, Inspector Douglas Duff and the district commissioner of Jerusalem, Edward Keith-Roach, requested of the chief Ashkenazi gabbai, Rabbi Noah Baruch Glaszstein, that evening to have the screen removed. It did not happen.

The following day, as Duff relates in his book Bailing with a Teaspoon, he and other policemen came down from Mount Scopus. They removed the partition as Jewish women hit them with their parasols. After tearing down the partition, a Jewish man clung to it as Duff and his men pushed through the angry crowd. Duff tossed the partition, along with the man still clinging to it, a distance from the Wall. According to Davar of September 28, an American Jewish woman was injured in the melee.

THIS WAS not the first time the presence of a prayer partition separating men and women at the Wall, had caused some contretemps and Muslim protestations.

During the Turkish regime, there were rulings throughout 1910-1913, regarding Tisha Be’av prayers, Shabbat and holidays, prohibiting Jews to erect a screen on the wall pavement or bring chairs, which were opposed by the Jewish leadership.

In February 1922, the Supreme Muslim Council asked the British Mandatory government to remove seats and benches from the Wall, claiming the Buraq site, the Arab name for the section of the Wall, was Wakf Islamic religious trust property.

Through the period 1922-28 at least 13 additional complaints against Jewish trespassing were forwarded to the Mandatory government by the Wakf and by Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti. On Yom Kippur 1925, the Wakf officials forced the removal of benches.

Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook had asked the government already on May 30, 1920, “to entrust the Wall to the care and control of the representative of Jewry.” Three days later a memo was sent to Ronald Storrs, then military governor of Jerusalem, by the Chief Rabbinical Council that the “Holy Wall is the property of Israel. No other person or persons is allowed to touch it.” A petition was sent by Kook to King George V to plead for Jewish rights.

But the mufti would have none of this, and the British regime caved in.

TWO MONTHS after the mechitza incident, on November 19, 1928, one of the least-known British White Papers, Cmd. 3229, was issued. Authorized by Leopold H. Amery, secretary of state for the colonies, it promulgated that the Western Wall is “part of the Haram al-Sharif” and, “as such, it is holy to Muslims. Moreover, it is legally the absolute property of the Muslim community.” As the Mandatory was obliged “to preserve the status quo,” “appurtenance[s] of Jewish worship” needed to be removed. The September 24 ruckus was due to Jewish action, which constituted an infraction of the status quo of the Wall. The shofar’s sounds were silenced at the Wall.

Here is the origin the “status quo” policy which Moshe Dayan adopted in 1967.

Even before the White Paper’s publication, the Muslim Supreme Council had proceeded to renovate the Wall in a transparent attempt to establish primacy.

That spurred Liberal MP Joseph Kenworthy, the Baron Strabolgi, to ask the secretary of state for the colonies on November 12 why the erecting of “masonry constructions on top of the Wailing Wall” was “being permitted... especially in view of the action taken by the authorities in Jerusalem to enforce the removal of temporary screens placed by Jewish devotees against the wall as infringing the status quo.” He continued, “Will [he] give instructions that the status quo is to be preserved and that this new construction on this ancient wall should be forbidden?”

The Mandate regime was not interested in Jewish rights. As the Bulletin reported on December 5, 1928, the day the newspaper published the text of the White Paper, based on Mizrachi UK, “Sir John Chancellor’s attitude in seeking a solution of the Wailing Wall question will be that of benevolent neutrality.” Minnesota’s American Jewish World December 7 editorial asked, “Do the British authorities invoke the “status quo” to reduce the number of tourists, that most profitable “crop” of the Holy Land? Then why conjure up that remnant of Turkish misrule to justify the shortsighted, stupid meddling of Jerusalem police?” 

THE SEPTEMBER-November 1928 events set off a series of incidents throughout the year. Muslim ruffians would throw stones at those who came to pray and grab headgear. They led donkeys through so that their dung could be dropped, and undertook construction projects such as opening a new entrance on the southern side or conducting dhikr ceremonies, ritualized recital of litanies, including singing, music and even dance. Jews, led by Prof. Joseph Klausner and Ze’ev Jabotinsky, established a “Pro-Western Wall Committee” to campaign for Jewish rights, while the Muslims announced a “Committee to Defend the Noble Buraq.” Eventually, all this culminated in the August 1929 riots with the loss of life, property and the abandonment of Jewish communities.

The shaw Commission of Inquiry presented its 200-page report in March 1930. It fully backed the ban on blowing the shofar that High Commissioner Chancellor had earlier decreed on September 1, 1929, when he proclaimed: “I intend to give effect to the principles laid down in the White Paper of the 19th November, 1928.” The inquiry commission specifically added, “It may be that the Jewish religious authorities have a clear and established right to bring the shofar to the Wailing Wall and to use it there as part of the ritual of their devotions, but if that be the case, it is all the more regrettable that they did not take steps to substantiate that right by the production of evidence.” 

The British then appointed a commission consisting of “three members who shall not be of British nationality” to consider “the question of the rights and claims of the Jews and Muslims with regard to the Wailing Wall.” Their report appeared in December 1930 and, among other prohibitions, ordered that “the Jews shall not be permitted to blow the ram’s horn (shofar) near the Wall nor cause any other disturbance to the Muslims that is avoidable,” and a Royal Order in Council published on May 19, 1931, made that absolute.

HOWEVER, ON October 2, as we noted above, an act of protest and revolt took place. Moshe Segal (1904-1985), a member of Betar and a devotee of the Revisionist ideologue Abba Ahimeir and a Chabad adherent, blew the shofar at the Wall without permission.

As he later recalled, he borrowed a tallit, removed the shofar from a stand and “I wrapped myself in the tallit. At that moment, I felt that I had created my own private domain. All around me, a foreign government prevails, ruling over the people of Israel even on their holiest day and at their holiest place, and we are not free to serve our God; but under this tallit is another domain. Here I am under no dominion save that of my Father in Heaven; here I shall do as He commands me, and no force on earth will stop me.” Until 1948, that act of defiance, despite the resulting months of imprisonment, was undertaken by members of the Jabotinsky movement – by Betar members, those of Brit HaBiryonim and the Irgun. Their shofar blasts were not only acts that “broke the law,” but, rather, they declared that the governmental authority that dared decree the blowing of a shofar as illegal was itself illegitimate.

They sounded a call of revolt. And their shofar blasts eventually turned into armed resistance that led to the collapse of the British regime. 

The writer is a research fellow at the Menachem Begin Heritage Center.

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We Blew It: On The Prohibited Sounding of the Shofar

These names might not be recognizable to most:

Eliel Lofgren. Charles Barde. C.J. Van Kemken. Stig Sahlin.

Those were the three members of a committee that reviewed the issue of the Western Wall following the August 1929 riots, and its coordinating secretary. 

Matson Collection

In a short 2010 blog post I recalled their activity and I want to return to them and that period, as has been noted, we will soon be marking 90 years to the ban on the blowing of the shofar at the Western Wall by the British, which was vigorously protested by the Chief Rabbis immediately on the day following Yom Kippur 1929:

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I need present some necessary history and will use material from the Report of the that three-man Commission which had been appointed by His Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, with the approval of the Council of the League of Nations, to determine the rights and claims of Moslems and Jews in connection with the Western or Wailing Wall at Jerusalem.  

As shown, there was a constant struggle of Jews against attempts by the Moslems to deny any legitimacy to customs and even simple decency of comfort of Jewish worshippers:

On 19th February, 1922, the acting Governor of Jerusalem received a letter from the Supreme Moslem Council, asking for the removal, according to the Palestine Government's previous instructions, of seats and benches from the Wall. As the Jews had again begun to place the seats there, the Council wrote again to the Governor on 16th April, 1922, asking him to restrain the Jews from bringing benches or seats to the place. Then the Council, at the request of the inhabitants of the private dwellings near the Pavement, in a letter dated 8th January, 1923, complained of a repeated trespass on the part of the Jews in the same respect. A reply was given by the acting Governor on the 3rd February, 1923, informing the Council that orders had been given for due observance of the earlier instructions.

That was 1922-1923.

Next, 1925-1926

After a certain time had elapsed the guardian of the Waqf of the Moghrabis protested again against the Jews for precisely the same reason and on that account in a Ietter dated 28th September, 1925, the Council lodged a complaint with the Governor, referring to the promise contained in his letter of 3rd February, 1923. As the Council did not receive any written answer for some time, they wrote again to the Governor on the 7th June, 1926, asking for a reply and entreating him to prevent the Jews "from repeating this act of theirs so as to abide by the status quo." Along with the said letter, however, there was enclosed a copy of a petition from the guardian of the Moghrabi Waqf, in which complaints were made "that Jews place benches, mats, tables, chairs, and lamps when they have not been previously allowed to do so." The guardian of the Waqf goes on to say that "this has caused a nuisance to passers by, as the road leads to the houses of the Waqf. They have therefore trespassed on part of the Waqf land, because the width of the passage does not exceed 2-1/2 metres. We are in continual quarrels with them as they insist on placing these things."

In other words, the Moslems, who built houses right up to the wall, leaving but a dozen feet or so for Jewish worshippers, then get upset they cannot walk by.

To continue:

Upon an answer being received from the Governor's Office dated the 28th of June, 1926, to the effect that "the matter was under investigation," the Council through their President wrote again on 20th July, 1926 repeating its request of 7th June, but without mentioning any particular appurtenances. As the result of the promised investigation was not forthcoming, the President of the Council sent a letter to the Deputy District Commissioner on the 4th of August, 1926, informing him that the Jews were again endeavouring to put out seats at the Wall. This information, he stated, had reached the Council from the guardian of the Moghrabi Waqf and his repeated request for action on behalf of the Council was dictated by those complaints. This time, however, the Council concluded their letter by saying: "The aim of the letter dated 20th July, 1926, was that the necessary steps be taken to prevent the Jews from putting anything in the Buraq, especially on Saturdays and Jewish feast days." On 25th August, 1926, the District Officer wrote to the President of the Council in reply to the above letter as follows: "That the measures referred to in the last paragraph of your quoted letter have been taken, and that no change in the status quo will take place."

And you wonder where Moshe Dayan got his idea about a "status quo".

After that nothing of any special interest happened up to the beginning of November, 1926, at which date the inhabitants of the Moroccan Quarter complained to the Supreme Moslem Council about the Jews bringing "small portable chairs" to the Wall, under the presence that they had been promised leave to use such chairs by the District Police Officer. Quarrels had arisen between the Moroccans and the Jews on account of that, and the guardian of the Waqf asked that the Jews might be prevented from placing anything there that was not sanctioned by old practice. The said petition caused the Council to write to the Deputy District Commissioner on 7th December, 1926, informing him about the quarrels that had just arisen about the small chairs which were " contrary to the ancient usage and practice," and he concluded his letter in the following way: "We do not believe that the Government desires to alter the ab antiquo state which has been enforced on to the present." (Italics inserted by the Commission.)

On to 1927-1928:

At the end of 1927 the Deputy District Commissioner advised the President of the Supreme Moslem Council that, in his opinion, it was desirable in the interests of public security that during certain hours of the day when Jews were wont to congregate at the Wall for praying purposes, tourists should not be permitted to go there. He, therefore, proposed to give orders to the policemen stationed near the Wailing Wall to refuse admission to tourists during those particular hours of the day.

This letter was written on the 2nd of December, 1927, and was answered very fully by the President of the Council, on the 15th of January, 1928. The Council objected to prohibiting tourists from approaching the Pavement, because any such prohibition amounted to "granting the Jews new rights in the same place, and, moreover, would arouse the feelings of the Moslems." In this letter the view was consequently advanced which came to light later in the proceedings before the Commission, viz., that "several incidents and many problems caused by the Jews around the question of the Buraq plainly indicate that they have laid down a plan of gradually obtaining this place.

Thereafter, the Deputy District Commissioner by letter of 30th March, 1928, informed the President of the Council that he would post a notice in the area of the Western Wall for the information of the tourists stating the special hours of prayer and "requesting the public to respect the privacy of those engaged in prayers at such times." In his answer to that letter on the 3rd of April the President of the Council stated that he could not agree to that notice being put up and repeated his assurance that every attempt by the Jews to extend their claims in the Buraq would be received with the utmost anxiety by the Moslems and would be flatly refused.

Not until the 24th of September, 1928, i.e., on the same day as the disturbances described in the Shaw Commission Report (page 29) took place, did the President of the Moslem Council himself make a direct and detailed protest against the Jews' habit of bringing appurtenances of worship to the Wall. He then specified "a wooden room covered with cloth, screens, mats, a large table in the middle and also the Ten Commandments placed on a chair which should not be there."

There is more but the above is more than sufficient. And it is important to see the development of the issue. The Mufti had his eye on turning the conflict into a religious one early on, prior to 1928 and "Jewish provocations".

The prohibition on sounding the shofar was already in place for Yom Kippur 1929, some two months after the riots, as reported in the Yiddish newspaper the Grodna Express:

and thanks to Bella Bryks-Klein for confirming my presumption that that what was reported.

The Committee concluded in its Report in connection with the shofar sounding:

It forms a part of the Jewish service in the Synagogue to blow the Shofar (ram's horn) on New Year's Day and on the Day of Atonement and the Jews have claimed the right on the said occasions to carry out this ceremony of theirs in front of the Wall too.

That is a claim that has not been recognised in the present administrative regulations or otherwise in actual practice, and the Commission has not found any sufficient reason for assenting to it.

And decided:

The Jews shall not be permitted to blow the ram's horn (Shofar) near the Wall nor cause any other disturbance to the Moslems that is avoidable;

Jews didn't have a chance with the Mandatory Government:

Already, back on November 28, 1928, the British published a 'forgotten' White Paper that was issued after the infamous "Prayer Partition" incident to re-established the principle of a status quo at sacred sites which included that 

a protocol could be mutually agreed upon between the Moslem and Jewish authorities regulating the conduct of the services at the Wall without prejudies to the legal rights of the Moslem owners and in such a way as to satisfy normal liturgical requirement and decencies in matters of public worship.

In that White Paper, it was made clear as reported in the Palestine Post of December 5, 1928, anything the Moslem Waqf and the Supreme Muslim Council considered as an act that infringes on the status quo would be opposed:

His Majesty 's Government regard it as their duty and it is their intention, to maintain, the established Jewish right of access to the pavment in front of the Wall for the purpose of their devotions and also their right to bring to the Wall those appurtenances that they were allowed to take to the Wall under the Turkish regime. It would be inconsistent with their duty under the Mandate were they to endeavour to compel the Moslem owners of the pavement to accord any further privileges or rights to the Jewish community. 

A previous post of mine on the subject.

Some other historical background here. 

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P.S. Despite the ban, from 1930 until 1947, members of Betar, Brit Habiryonim and the Irgu blew the shofar, some being subsequently detained for up to 6 months in prison. In 1944, the Irgun warned the British not to think of coming into the alleyway in front of the Wall, a suggestion with which they complied.

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