One of the most profound and beautiful aspects of Jewish tradition is its embrace of disagreement. The Sages of the Talmud saw seventy faces to the Torah, the number 70 expressing a non-specific abundance of understandings. They preserved both prevailing and dissenting opinions together, proclaiming these and these are words of the living God. The disputes of Hillel and Shammai were never meant to silence one another, but to illuminate Jewish life from multiple angles. Even biblical heroes argued with God — Abraham over Sodom and Gomorrah, Moses demanding forgiveness for the people after the Golden Calf. Disagreement is not a flaw in Judaism; it is its lifeblood.

And yet this very tradition — pluralistic, argumentative, vibrantly alive — has largely been abandoned by today’s leadership, which seeks to suppress any Jewish expression that does not conform to its worldview. Instead of these and these they seek to permit and enshrine “only this.”

Nowhere is this more visible than at the Kotel, Judaism’s most significant religious and national site. Over the years, norms governing conduct there have grown increasingly rigid, effectively turning a national space into a narrowly proprietary ultra-Orthodox synagogue. Those who do not pray according to the rules of the Chief Rabbinate, are not merely unwelcome, they are confronted and harassed.

A decade ago, a........

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