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Are Jews who pray through the Western Wall in Israel engaged in idolatry? Is this really any different than Catholics who bow before carved images of stone or wood and use prayer beads when they pray?

EZEKIEL 13:3-16 (NKJV):
Thus says YHWH (the Lord) GOD: “Woe to the foolish prophets, who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing! O Israel, your prophets are like foxes in the deserts. You have not gone up into the gaps to build A WALL for the house of Israel to stand in battle on the day of YHWH (the Lord). They have envisioned futility and false divination, saying, ‘Thus says YHWH (the Lord)!’ But YHWH (the Lord) has not sent them; yet they hope that the word may be confirmed. Have you not seen a futile vision, and have you not spoken false divination? You say, ‘YHWH (The Lord) says,’ but I have not spoken.”
Therefore thus says YHWH (the Lord) God: “Because you have spoken nonsense and envisioned lies, therefore I am indeed against you,” says YHWH (the Lord) GOD. “My hand will be against the prophets who envision futility and who divine lies; they shall not be in the assembly of My people, nor be written in the record of the house of Israel, nor shall they enter into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am YHWH (the Lord) God.
Because, indeed, because they have seduced My people, saying, ‘Peace!’ when there is no peace – and one builds A WALL, and they plaster it with untempered mortar – say to those who plaster it with untempered mortar, that it will fall. There will be flooding rain, and you, O great hailstones, shall fall; and a stormy wind shall tear it down. Surely, when THE WALL has fallen, will it not be said to you, ‘Where is the mortar with which you plastered it?’”
Therefore thus says YHWH (the Lord) God: “I will cause a stormy wind to break forth in My fury; and there shall be a flooding rain in My anger, and great hailstones in fury to consume it. So I will break down THE WALL you have plastered with untempered mortar, and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundation will be uncovered; it will fall, and you shall be consumed in the midst of it. Then you shall know that I am YHWH (the Lord).
Thus will I accomplish My wrath on THE WALL and on those who have plastered it with untempered mortar; and I will say to you, ‘THE WALL is no more, nor those who plastered it, that is, the prophets of Israel who prophesy concerning Jerusalem, and who see visions of peace for her when there is no peace,’” says YHWH (the Lord) God.

LUKE 21:5-6 (NKJV):
Then, as some spoke of the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and donations, He said, “These things which you see – the days will come in which not one stone shall be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.”

The prophesy of the destruction (throwing down) of the temple wall is yet to be fulfilled.

2 KINGS 18:4 (NKJV):
He (Hezekiah) removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the BRONZE SERPENT that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan.

Praying through a wall is not the first instance in which the Jewish people engaged in praying through objects that once served a legitimate purpose. The Hebrews, after the Exodus from Egypt, began to worship the bronze serpent that was set up in the desert that was used for healing snakebites (Numbers 21:9; 2 Kings 18:4).

EXODUS 20:22-26 (NKJV):
Then YHWH (the Lord) said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the children of Israel: ‘You have seen that I have talked with you from heaven. You shall not make anything to be with Me—gods of silver or gods of gold you shall not make for yourselves. An altar of earth you shall make for Me, and you shall sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings, your sheep and your oxen. In every place where I record My name I will come to you, and I will bless you. And if you make Me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone; for if you use your tool on it, you have profaned it. Nor shall you go up by steps to My altar, that your nakedness may not be exposed on it.’

If a people are to pray to God via an altar structure used for prayer, it is NOT to be of hewn stones, it is to be of unhewn stones, as God commands. The Jews of Israel, engaged in prayer using the hewn stones of the Western Wall, are doing it wrong.

Jews who pray through a man-made wall of hewn stones of their former temple are engaged in idolatry. Elohim (God) hates all forms of idolatry and the use of objects to engage Him in prayer. We are to worship and pray in SPIRIT and in TRUTH, not through the use of man-made walls or objects with supposed ‘points of contact’ to Elohim (God).