Elevator Project To Make Western Wall More Accessible

A long-awaited project is underway to make the site at the Western Wall —adjacent to Judaism’s most sacred site, the Temple Mount — more accessible with a much-need elevator, The Washington Times reports. The elevators — each with a capacity of 30 people — will take visitors up and down the 85-ft gap between the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall, or Kotel. When the project is complete, organizers expect thousands to use the elevators daily. Visitors will be deposited at the entryway for the Western Wall plaza, past where buses and cars pull up and before the requisite security check. The construction follows seven years of archaeological excavations at the site and is ongoing on a narrow sliver of undeveloped slope between two yeshivahs and near an existing stairway on the eastern edge of the Jewish Quarter.