We Must Free the Western Wall
Few issues manage to simultaneously inflame passions and bore most Israelis quite like the fight over who controls the Western Wall. Last week, just before the attack on Iran, that fight reached a new low — the Knesset passed a preliminary reading of a bill by MK Avi Maoz — whose party holds just one seat in parliament — that would hand the Israeli Chief Rabbinate complete control over the entire Western Wall.
The bill’s success came down to timing. It was brought to a vote about a week after Israel’s Supreme Court issued a ruling on the southern prayer section of the Wall — the area that had been set aside for egalitarian, mixed-gender worship under what’s known as the Western Wall Compromise. The Court’s decision was largely procedural: back in 2017, Prime Minister Netanyahu had ordered the development of that southern section as part of a cabinet resolution. That resolution had frozen the broader Western Wall Compromise but did call for moving forward with building out the “Ezrat Yisrael” section in the south. A special ministerial committee led by a minister from the ultra-Orthodox Shas party later determined that religious sites, including the southern section, should be open to all streams of Judaism. After years of stalling, the Supreme Court ruled that this decision was still binding and that the government needed to actually follow through on it.
So Maoz’s bill — which overrides Netanyahu’s own cabinet resolution and seeks to place the entire Western Wall, including its southern and side sections, under the Chief Rabbinate’s exclusive authority — is a dramatic escalation in response to what was essentially a procedural court ruling. The lesson here is straightforward: when you give an inch, some people come back for the whole thing. The MKs who voted for this bill know exactly what they’re doing. They know the Chief Rabbinate will never allow worship that doesn’t follow the strictest Orthodox interpretation of Jewish law. If this bill becomes law, it would effectively end any possibility of accommodating the full diversity of Jewish practice at the Wall — turning one of Judaism’s holiest sites into, in practice, one very large ultra-Orthodox synagogue.
Most Israelis don’t particularly care, probably because the Wall stopped feeling like their own space a long time ago. After years of ultra-Orthodox dominance over the site, the people you’re most likely to find at the main plaza these days are supporters of the current right-wing coalition. Those who were gradually pushed out have largely accepted the reality, even if they still believe the Wall should be a national symbol for all Jews. And yet — according to the Conservative (Masorti) movement, which actually runs the “Ezrat Yisrael” section — around 2,000 bar and bat mitzvahs take place there every year. That’s in a cramped, run-down, hard-to-reach space with no shade and no bathroom. Many of these families come from Jewish communities around the world, but a significant number are Israeli families who simply want their daughter to be able to read from the Torah without being harassed, or a mom or grandmother to watch a milestone family moment without craning her neck over a tall dividing partition.
The vote by 56 Knesset members to advance Maoz’s extreme bill demands an equally decisive response: it’s time to fundamentally change the strategy. Instead of accepting crumbs, we need to stop ceding the Wall to a religious minority that does not represent the Jewish people as a whole. Instead of fighting only for what the Wall means to Israeli identity, we need to fight for what it means to Jewish identity worldwide. The battle needs to be for the whole Wall — including the main plaza.
Anyone who genuinely cares about the Western Wall — in Israel or in the Diaspora — needs to accept that this latest Knesset vote has killed the Western Wall Framework Agreement for good. It’s time to go back to basics: the Wall does not belong to the ultra-Orthodox, no matter how much political power they hold right now. Future delegations and groups visiting the Wall should go to the main plaza — not be shuffled off to the southern section, which the government has no intention of even fixing up or making accessible. Jews everywhere — in Israel and around the world — need to demand that the Wall be freed and returned to all of us. A traditionally Orthodox section can absolutely remain in a dedicated area, with proper access. But the central plaza must be open to diverse forms of prayer, ceremonies, and communal life — each community according to its own tradition. That demand needs to come loudly and clearly from the leaders of Jewish movements, federations, and major communities across the Diaspora, and from everyone who still believes that religious freedom in Israel actually matters.
