The struggle over the Kotel has never really been about stones.

It has always been about us — about who belongs, whose Judaism counts, and whether the Jewish people can hold more than one way of standing before God without turning difference into division.

I know this personally. I sat in the rooms where the Kotel compromise was negotiated nearly a decade ago. Those meetings were often exhausting, sometimes hopeful, always consequential. I remember one moment vividly: sitting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, drawing on his background studying architecture at MIT, began sketching a visualization of what the expanded prayer space might look like.

In that moment, it felt real. It felt personal. It felt like a genuine attempt to imagine a Kotel spacious enough for the entire Jewish people.

That image has stayed with me, because it captured what was possible.

And it makes what came later harder to forget.

Politics, as we know, is local. Coalition realities are real. I understand that. But when the agreement was ultimately frozen, many in the Diaspora felt they had been thrown under the bus. The sting was not only political, it was relational.

That wound still lingers.

Now, with the Israeli Supreme Court again pressing the government toward implementation of egalitarian prayer arrangements, the debate has returned. Some see judicial overreach. Others see long-delayed........

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