This proposal was accepted for the canceled AIS 2020 conference and is being resubmitted with slight changes. The proposed paper concentrates on the physical and symbolic aspects present in different stages of the design of the Ohel Yitzhak and Kedem compounds, in the vicinity of the Temple Mount. I offer to critically examine the ways these compounds express Jacob’s dream, as part of explicit and implicit negotiations on pluralism and diversity presently being held in the State and Israeli society as expressed and formulated in contemporary emerging architecture in the Old City basin. Such cultural negotiations are common and refer to the material expression of social, religious and political negotiation, through which the imagination of community and nation are shaped (Dovey, 2008; Vale, 2008; Kuzno, 2000). The paper analyzes these compounds’ design, in the context of Judaism and messianic manifestations in the history of Israeli architecture, of local Arab-Palestinian architecture and that of the Levant. According to the biblical story, on his journey, as Jacob slept (Genesis 28:10-15) he had a dream in which God was revealed and promised him the land. The ladder, staircase or ramp systems produce a vertical pivot (axis mundi) referring to a symbolic, metaphorical object that mediates and creates a transit path (Lipton 1996; Rad 1961) connecting heaven and earth, man and God, becoming a characteristic motif of Jerusalem, as well as of construction of the stepped temple towers of the region. The paper focuses on these compounds designs’ impact on questions of citizenship, democracy and the fragmentation of the Israeli society through material expressions of Judaism and Messianism.