Rabbi Einat Ramon vows she will be back, continuing her struggle to hold mixed prayers for men and women at Judaism's holiest site. The last time she tried, on August 7th, she was foiled by the police. It was the eve of Tisha B'Av, the Jewish calendar date marking the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Romans in AD 70, when Rabbi Ramon made her way to the last remnant of the temple - Jerusalem's Western Wall - with around 200 male and female members of the Conservative movement.
In the area directly in front of the wall, thousands of Orthodox Jews stood reading the Book of Lamentations, with men and women praying separately according to the Orthodox custom. Dr Ramon and her group, who follow a more liberal, flexible approach to Jewish law, began praying together in an area set back from the wall where the sexes are allowed to mingle.
But within minutes police moved in and roughly dispersed them, saying their presence would provoke a violent response from Orthodox worshippers. Dr Ramon, a Conservative rabbi - in the Orthodox tradition only men are rabbis - insists that the wall "belongs to the entire Jewish people, not only the Orthodox".
That's not the view of Mr Yigal Bibi, the Orthodox deputy Minister of Religious Affairs: "How can the wishes of a tiny group be more important than those of the 10,000 people who were fasting and praying at the Wall?"
The Western Wall showdown is one of the more recent skirmishes in an escalating, passionate battle that touches on the relationship between synagogue and state in Israel. But it also goes to the heart of the confrontation between the pluralistic Reform and Conservative movements who are fighting for recognition, and the Orthodox.
For many of the Orthodox, the Reform and Conservative movements, which are small in Israel but represent a majority of American Jews, are heretical departures from Judaism. "They are a separate religion like Christianity and Islam," says one religious politician.
In Israel, the Orthodox enjoy a state-recognised monopoly on religious life, with matters of personal status like marriage and divorce entirely in the hands of the state-funded Chief Rabbinate and religious courts.
The monopoly is maintained by Orthodox political power, which increased dramatically in last year's general election. Now, the religious parties are trying to use their leverage to reverse gains made by the non-Orthodox movements in Israel.
Dr David Rosen, the former Chief Rabbi of Ireland and currently the director of the Israeli office of the Anti-Defamation League, is critical of efforts to shut out the non-Orthodox streams.
"To prevent other forms of Judaism being recognised formally by the state is totally counter-productive for Judaism in the long term," insists Rabbi Rosen, who is one of a small group of liberal-minded Orthodox rabbis in Israel. "If Orthodoxy is identified with political interests it alienates the majority [of Jews]."
The most recent blow to the Orthodox monopoly - and one that threatens to create a coalition headache for the Prime Minister, Mr Benjamin Netanyahu - is an early-August Supreme Court ruling, stipulating that a Reform woman from Netanyah should be allowed to sit on the coastal town's all-Orthodox religious council, which gets government funds to perform a variety of functions like building synagogues.
When the Reform representative turned up at her first meeting, though, she was barred from participating. Days later the court, angry at being ignored, reiterated its decision. Now, the religious parties are drafting legislation to circumvent the court's decisions, and effectively bar non-Orthodox members from the councils.
"The Orthodox establishment has shot itself in the foot," says Dr Rosen. "By going to war with the non-Orthodox, it has increased the interest in them among secular Israelis."
But the hardline Orthodox approach has also deeply affected relations between Israel and Jews in the diaspora, especially in the US where the majority belong to one of the non-Orthodox streams, but also in Britain where they are about a quarter of a 350,000strong community.
They have been angered particularly by the controversy over the right of their rabbinic leaders to perform conversions. For diaspora Jews, especially those in America who donate money to Israel and do Jerusalem's bidding on Capitol Hill, the non-recognition of their brand of Judaism in the Jewish state is deeply distressing. Some communities have even threatened to withhold donations to Israel.