The Knesset Vote this week to grant Israel’s Chief Rabbinate expanded authority over the Western Wall is not a technical administrative matter. It touches one of the most symbolically charged and emotionally sensitive sites in the Jewish world. For Jews in Israel and across the Diaspora, the Kotel is not simply a prayer space. It is a living symbol of shared history, longing, and peoplehood.

And yet, instead of treating this moment with the care it deserves, the issue has been cannibalized by three different camps — each advancing its own agenda, and each, in the process, disenfranchising the broader Jewish public.

For the governing coalition, the bill became another instrument in its ongoing battle with Israel’s judicial system. Rather than fostering a serious conversation about the character and governance of the Kotel, the proposal was folded into a larger constitutional struggle. The Wall became a prop in a power contest. The real, substantive questions were overshadowed by political........

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