We had our second unit test this week on Medieval and Judaism post the destruction of the second beit hamikdash. My last question before completing the last part of the exam asked: Is Judaism as divided today as it was at the time of the Sadducees Pharisees, Zealots, and Essenes?

Throughout my Israel experience, I have seen the Kotel in many different shades. While Masada may be a symbol of the Israeli dogma, the Kotel stands as a 2,000 year old relic of the Jewish identity.  It is a place where Jews stain the wall with their tears and anoint it the Wailing Wall. It is a place rich in history where thousands of Jews pilgrimed to celebrate the Shalosh Regalim all those years ago. It is a place where Jews from all four corners of the earth gather to celebrate together at the holiest site for the Jewish people. Or so we think.

To me the Kotel is often a strangled form of Judaism. A place so caught up in tradition it can’t breath in the cool air of anything but Haredi or ultra orthodox. Where women must cover their butts when wearing leggings and god forbid a man would look over the mechitza to find his wife and daughter in the thick of the crowd. It is a form of Judaism contingent upon the individual. Few minyanim, more tfillot b’lachash. The occasional simchot, but only on the other side. It is a place not of education, but separation. You kiss the wall, mutter a few words if you know them in Hebrew, and back away.

The power of community that has sustained Judaism since the destruction of the second temple no longer beats in the heart of the Kotel. At our holiest site we come together simply to be more divided than ever. Division thrives through a religious girl interrogating my friend about a rainbow kippah she wore just to show her pride or the hundreds of women who show up to Rosh Chodesh services to ensure that those other women, garbed in Talitot, will never, ever, touch the Wall.

We may not be divided as we were 2,000 years ago but our variance bars us from becoming, once again, a kehilah kedosha. Can we overcome our walls and and our differences? It will certainly take time, but I’d like to think so.

Friday night at the Kotel a women with metallic blue eyeshadow, purple hair covered by a large turban and wearing a misty blue robe stood up on a plastic chair and started singing and dancing to “David Melech Yisrael’, “Lo Yisa Goy” and various other songs. For a while we danced and sang with her no more than twenty or thirty women strong. This anonymous woman chipped away, just for one evening, at that divide so maybe, one day, we will bring it crashing down.