Haaretz, Jun. 17, 2016

But the Western Wall? No matter how you look at it, it has no intrinsic holiness. It’s an external support wall (not even a wall of the Temple itself) that held up the man-made hill on which Herod’s Temple was built. It became holy only in modern times. It’s an invented religious site, and there’s no difference between the rituals that have developed around its stones than any of the pagan displays that characterize the contemporary Judaism of wood and stone.

[...] As opposed to a lofty and abstract idea, the ancient Temple was nothing but a compromise between the idea of a God who “has neither a semblance of body nor a body,” and the need of less sophisticated believers for a tangible ritual object — a calf, a hut, an altar, blood, the smoke of the animal sacrifices and the glory of the priests.