Plan To Allow Women’s Prayer at Western Wall Threatens Archeological Treasures
The Jerusalem Archaeological Park and Davidson Center, located south of the Western Wall, is widely considered the most important archaeological site in the country − the site which perhaps best embodies the destruction of the Temple. Enormous stones that formed the upper tiers of this wall prior to the destruction lie on top of each other in a tall heap.
Above them are remnants of Robinson’s Arch, the largest stone overpass in the ancient world, which led to the Temple Mount. Not far from there are the remnants of the Umayyad palaces, immense structures built by the rulers of that dynasty in the early Muslim period, some 1,300 years ago.
This park area has now come under threat due to Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky’s plan to create an additional prayer area there for the Western Wall. According to details that Haaretz has obtained, the plan calls for the erection of an enormous wooden deck that would cover 500 square meters and be suspended seven to eight meters off the ground by steel beams to create an additional space for worship.
The local archaeology community, led by the Israel Antiquities Authority, is up in arms against the scheme, which they believe threatens to alter the historic balance between the religious section and the archaeological-scientific-tourist part of the Wall.
For more, go to Haaretz
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO