“Every day, people are asking when it will be ready,” the site manager in Jerusalem told JNS.
Visitors in the Old City of Jerusalem hoping to spend time at the Western Wall—adjacent to Judaism’s most sacred site, the Temple Mount—must either descend 142 steps from the Jewish Quarter or take a substantial detour around the city walls.
A long-awaited project is underway to make the site more accessible with much-needed elevators. The construction follows seven years of archaeological excavations at the site, which unearthed millennia-old relics of Jewish history near where the ancient First and Second Temples once stood.
“This is the realization of the most important dream for me, because it is a project of kindness for people,” Herzl Ben-Ari, CEO of the Company for the Development and Renovation of the Jewish Quarter, told JNS during a tour this week.