Israel Matzav

An elevator to the Western Wall?

With the financial help of a private donor, the government is considering installing an elevator that would take people in wheelchairs and strollers from the last street in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City down to the Western Wall. Currently descent is by several steep flights of stairs with no handrails.

Two thousand years ago, stone bridges connected the Jewish Quarter directly to the Temple Mount, saving the high priests the long trek down and back up. By this time next year, visitors with baby carriages and the disabled could be saving themselves the same schlep if an elevator is approved by the Jerusalem Planning and Building Committee.

The elevator, proposed by the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter, would start at Misgav Ledach Street and descend 21 meters to a new pedestrian tunnel. It would greatly improve access for visitors in wheelchairs or those with other disabilities, who now have to contend with several flights of stairs. The pedestrian tunnel would be 60-70 meters in length and pass underneath the stairs near the Aish HaTorah Yeshiva.

At present, the only way for visitors in wheelchairs to reach the Kotel is through the road leading to Dung Gate, which is very steep and has no sidewalks.

“The idea is to make a simple connection between the Jewish Quarter and the Kotel. We want to make the Kotel more accessible to people with disabilities, or even large families with baby carriages,” Daniel Shukuron, the project director from the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday.

While the idea of an elevator to the Western Wall Plaza has been floated by various groups, it took New York businessman Baruch Klein, a part-time Jewish Quarter resident, to donate the money to get the project moving. An accident in Brooklyn years ago left him bedridden for many months, and continues to give him trouble walking.

“He’d been thinking about building an elevator for a while, and when we sat with him and started to really discuss it, we fell in love with the idea,” Shukuron said.

My mother, of blessed memory, passed away five years ago. She was wheelchair bound for several years before that, and I cannot remember the last time we took her to the Kotel. She would have loved this idea. She was often amazed and upset by how little in this country is 'handicapped accessible.'

Read the whole thing.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:40 PM