The Western Wall

It is believed that it was the Arabs who, seeing the Jews coming to the wall to pray to the Lord and weeping over the destruction of the Temple, gave it the nickname the "Wailing Wall".

Since then, the name has taken hold in other languages as well.

And although the Western Wall never was a fragment of the Temple, being only a part of a retaining wall erected during the expansion of the Temple Mount under the rule of King Herod, it is still revered as the most sacred object preserved by the Jews.

Nothing but the Western Wall survived the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 A.D.

For thousands of years, the Western Wall has been a holy place and pilgrimage site for Jews.

Of all the places one can visit, it is closest to Judaism's most sacred spot – The Foundation Stone (in Hebrew - Even haShetiya).

As legend has it, it was on this stone where the first man — Adam – was created from the dust of the earth .

Here, according to the Torah, the Jewish forefather Abraham prepared his son Yitzhak for sacrifice.

And it was here that the forefather Jacob once spent the night and had a vision of a ladder standing on the ground, its top reaching towards heaven and angels ascending and descending the ladder.

After the Romans suppressed the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 A.D., an imperial decree was issued banning Jews from residing in Jerusalem.

And only under Constantine I, when the Roman Empire became Christian, Jews were allowed to enter the city, but only once a year, on the 9th of the month of Av (Tisha B'av).

It is on the 9th of Av that both Jewish Temples were destroyed, and it is on this day that the Jews lament the loss of the Temple and mourn bitterly the fate of their people.

In 638, Jerusalem was conquered by the Muslims. The Al-Aqsa Mosque (with a gray-blue dome) and the Dome of the Rock (with a golden dome) emerged on the Temple Mount. Although Arab sources report that the Emir "left the Western Wall to the Jews who came to it for prayer", in the 12th century Salah Al-Din's son granted the land next to the wall to Moroccan settlers and they built their houses there at a distance of only 8 cubits, that is, of about 4 meters, from the wall.

Over the centuries, the land adjacent to the Western Wall continued to be built upon.

There was only one passage to the Wall left - through a maze of narrow alleyways of the Moroccan Quarter. But already in 1840, Ibrahim Pasha issued a decree forbidding Jews from making new passages to the Wall.

He also warned them against “raising their voices and displaying their books there.”

Since the middle of the 19th century, Jews have made repeated attempts to purchase back the land in front of the Wall (in the so-called Moroccan quarter), but to no avail.

During the British Mandate, the British administration initially tried to help Jews purchase a plot of land near the wall, or at least safely organize prayers and ceremonies.

However, due to Muslims' adamant opposition the British authorities often had to to take sides with them. The hostilities between Jews and Arabs at the Wall led to clashes and even bloodshed.

During Israel's War of Independence in 1948, the entire Old City, together with the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, was occupied by Jordan.

For the next nineteen years, neither Israeli Arabs nor Israeli Jews were allowed to visit their holy sites in Jordanian territories.

On June 7th, 1967, during the battles for Jerusalem in the Six-Day War, Israeli forces occupied the entire Old City and seized the Western Wall. Within forty-eight hours of the Wall's capture by the army the entire area in front of it was completely cleared.

The 140-square-meter narrow paved area, once designated by Muslims for the Jews to pray, has now become the vast area of the Western Wall Plaza extending over more than 20,000 square meters.

It can now accommodate up to 400,000 people.

People offering prayers near the Western Wall can be seen at any time of the day.

Jews from Israel and Jews from across the Diaspora come to the wall.

Religious Jews all over the world are praying in the direction of the Western Wall.

The tradition of notes with requests and prayers that are put into cracks of the Western Wall started more than 300 years ago.

The earliest description of this tradition dates back to the beginning of the 18th century. Now more than a million notes are put in between the stones of the Western Wall annually.

This has become a tradition not only among tourists from across the globe, but also among world's biggest celebrities, including presidents, royalty and the Pope.

There are notes written in almost any possible language or format without exception. According to Jewish law, prayer notes cannot be thrown away, instead they need to be periodically collected and buried in a specially designated area.

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