Tag Archives: Western Wall

Masked and partitioned, worshippers return to Jerusalem’s Western Wall

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Worshippers are returning to the Western Wall in Jerusalem as Judaism’s holiest prayer site gradually reopens under eased coronavirus precautions. But now they are themselves being walled-off.

Under revised rules, up to 300 visitors at a time are being allowed to access the Western Wall, a remnant of two ancient Jewish temples in Jerusalem’s Old City. They must wear masks.

“Worshippers that have so yearned to visit the sacred stones and pray in front of them can return to the Western Wall while keeping to the health ministry restrictions,” said the site’s chief rabbi, Shmuel Rabinowitz.

But the prayer plaza facing the wall, which in peak holidays of the past would throng with thousands of people, is subdivided by barriers and cloth partitions forming temporary cloisters that can each accommodate 19 worshippers – the current cap.

Full Jewish prayer services require a quorum of 10.

(Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Pravin Char)

Workers in hazmat suits collect prayers from ‘God’s mailbox’ in Jerusalem

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Twice a year, cleaning teams using long sticks gouge out tens of thousands of written prayers that visitors traditionally cram into the crevices of Judaism’s Western Wall in Jerusalem.

It was spring cleaning again at the wall on Tuesday. But this time, the rite was held with precautions against coronavirus infection in place.

Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks sprayed sanitizer on the wall’s ancient stones while others held onto their sticks with gloves as they extracted the paper notes left in “God’s mailbox”.

Religious authorities also operate a service in which people can email their prayers for placement between the stones.

One would-be worshipper, who stepped up to the wall and kissed it, was removed by police, a day after Israel tightened public prayer restrictions.

The Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, who oversees the collection of the notes to ensure there’s always room for more, offered a prayer for salvation “from this difficult virus that has attacked the world”.

The papers were placed into bags for ritual burial on Jerusalem’s Mount of Olives. A short distance away from the Western Wall, al-Aqsa mosque was also being sanitized.

The Western Wall is a remnant of the compound of the Second Temple that was destroyed in 70 AD. It stands today beneath a religious plaza revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and by Jews as the Temple Mount.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)

Two tales of a city: Jerusalem tour guided by a Palestinian and an Israeli

Tourists take part in the Dual Narrative tour lead by tour guides, Noor Awad, a Palestinian from Bethlehem, and Lana Zilberman Soloway, a Jewish seminary student, stand next to the Dome of the Rock on the compound known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as The Noble Sanctuary, in Jerusalem's Old City, February 4, 2019. Picture taken February 4, 2019. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

By Rami Ayyub and Stephen Farrell

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – On a Jerusalem plaza looking up at the Western Wall and the Dome of the Rock, a crowd gathers in front of two guides, listening attentively, a common sight in a city packed with pilgrims and tourists visiting its religious landmarks.

What is unusual is that one of the guides is Palestinian, one is Israeli, and they are taking turns to give their perspectives on the city known to Jews as Yerushalayim and to Arabs as al-Quds..

“We are in Jerusalem, which is the capital of the Jewish state. We are in one of the holiest places in the world for Christianity. And the keys are held by Muslim families,” said Israeli guide Lana Zilberman Soloway, who spoke first as the group reached the Church of the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus is believed to be buried. “And all three coexist at the same time.”

Her counterpart, Noor Awad, from Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank just a few km (miles) away, took a different view of the status quo, noting that Muslims and Christians from the West Bank or Gaza need Israeli travel permits to worship here.

“For Palestinians, this is the capital of Palestine and the capital of their country,” said Awad, 28. “If you don’t get that permission, you can’t come actually here to pray. So the place is being used, and plays a lot into the two narratives and the conflict we have today.”

The two guides heard each other out politely, with the occasional quip or raised eyebrow. Two dozen tourists, mainly foreigners living in the city, peppered them with questions.

The company, MEJDI Tours, says its “Dual Narrative” tour was “created in partnership by Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, and Jews”. The weekly tours have been underway since last October.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital. The Old City and holy sites lie in the mainly Arab eastern half, captured by Israel in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians say the eastern half is occupied land and must become the capital of a future Palestinian state.

At the heart of Old City, the tour came to the hill known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary.

“Where the Dome of the Rock today is standing, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven to talk to God,” Awad told the tour party, describing what Muslims consider the holiest spot on earth outside of the two Arabian cities Muhammad called home.

“That’s a very central event, somehow similar to the story of Moses talking to God from Mount Sinai.”

For Jews, it is the site of the biblical temple, destroyed by Babylonian conquerors, rebuilt and razed again under the Romans. The Western Wall, a restraint for the foundations built by Herod the Great 2000 years ago, is a sacred place of prayer.

“All the way down deep underground, underneath the golden dome, 5779 years ago, God created the world. 4,000 years ago we believe Abraham came to bind Isaac on that exact spot,” Zilberman Soloway said.

Dave Yedid, 26, a Jewish seminary student from Long Island, New York who came on the tour, said: “exactly what differs in the sort of Jewish Zionist narrative versus the Palestinian narrative is something I’ll take home with me.”

“I wanted to see those two side by side.”

(Reporting by Rami Ayyub; Editing by Stephen Farrell and Peter Graff)

Tens of thousands at Jerusalem’s Western Wall for priestly blessing

Jewish worshippers, some covered in prayer shawls, pray during a priestly blessing on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City September 26, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of worshippers packed Jerusalem’s Western Wall plaza on Wednesday to receive a blessing from members of Judaism’s priestly caste.

Holding prayers shawls above their heads and covering their faces, the priests, known as “Kohanim” in Hebrew, began chanting the blessing, which begins: “The Lord bless you and keep you”.

The ceremony is held during the Jewish holidays of Passover and Sukkot, the latter of which is being celebrated this week.

A Jewish worshipper prays during a priestly blessing on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City September 26, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

A Jewish worshipper prays during a priestly blessing on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City September 26, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad

The Kohanim on Wednesday included the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

“It’s my opportunity to bless the people of Israel,” Friedman, an Orthodox Jew, told reporters.

According to Jewish tradition, Kohanim are descendants of Aaron, Moses’s brother, whose offspring served as priests in the biblical temples of Jerusalem. Many Jews with surnames such as Cohen, Kahan and Katz are Kohanim.

The Western Wall is a remnant of the compound of the Second Temple that was destroyed in 70 AD. It stands today beneath a religious plaza known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as the Temple Mount.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller)

Boulder falls from Jerusalem’s Western Wall, barely missing worshipper

A man looks at a stone that fell off the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, July 23, 2018. REUTERS/ Nir Elias

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An elderly worshipper had a close call on Monday when a 100-kg (220 lb) stone suddenly fell from Jerusalem’s Western Wall and crashed at her feet.

The Israel Antiquities Authority said the boulder may have been dislodged by erosion caused by vegetation or moisture in the biblical wall, the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray.

“I didn’t hear or feel anything until it landed right at my feet,” Daniella Goldberg, a 79-year-old Jerusalem resident who had gone to the wall in the early morning to worship, told Reuters.

A security camera captured the rare occurrence at the site revered by Jews as a remnant of the compound of the Second Temple destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

One of Islam’s holiest sites, the Noble Sanctuary, where al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock stand, lies above.

The footage showed the stone falling from a height of about seven meters (23 feet) in a nearly vacant section of the wall adjacent to its picture-postcard main plaza, where Jewish worshippers traditionally cram written prayers into crevices.

Just a day earlier, worshippers had flocked to the holy site for Tisha B’Av, an annual Jewish day of mourning that marks the destruction of the two Biblical temples in Jerusalem.

“A great miracle occurred when a stone weighing about 100 kilos fell near the worshipper and did not hurt her,” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat said in a statement.

The Jerusalem municipality temporarily closed the section for a safety inspection. It is built near piles of boulders believed to date to the time of the Second Temple.

The main Western Wall esplanade remained open.

A 2014 study by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem charted erosion in the different kinds of limestone that make up the Western Wall and said it a problem for engineers concerned about its stability.

(Editing by Ros Russell)

Timing of Trump peace plan depends on Palestinians: Pence

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence touches the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City January 23, 2018.

By Jeff Mason

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday the timing of a long-awaited U.S. Middle East peace initiative depended on the return of Palestinians to negotiations.

President Donald Trump’s advisers have been working on the outlines of a plan for some time. But Palestinians ruled out Washington as a peace broker after the U.S. president’s Dec. 6 recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

“The White House has been working with our partners in the region to see if we can develop a framework for peace,” Pence told Reuters in an interview in Jerusalem on the last leg of a three-day Middle East trip. “It all just depends now on when the Palestinians are going to come back to the table.”

Trump’s Jerusalem move angered the Palestinians, sparked protests in the Middle East and raised concern among Western countries that it could further destabilize the region. Palestinians see East Jerusalem as capital of a future state.

A White House official told reporters he hoped the plan would be announced in 2018.

“It’ll come out both when it’s ready and when both sides are actually willing to engage on it,” said the White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official acknowledged that the United States and the Palestinian leadership had not had any direct diplomatic contact since Trump’s Jerusalem declaration.

Pence said in the interview that he and the president believed the decision, under which the United States also plans to move its embassy to Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, would improve peacemaking prospects.

Hanan Ashrawi, a senior official at the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), said the Trump administration had dealt a death blow to any prospect for peace.

“The extremist positions of this U.S. administration and the biblical messianic message of Pence not only disqualified the U.S. as a peace broker but created conditions of volatility and instability in the region and beyond,” Ashrawi said in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Pence discussed the Jerusalem issue during talks with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Saturday and Jordan’s King Abdullah on Sunday. He said the two leaders had agreed to convey to the Palestinians that the United States was eager to resume peace talks.

“We want them (the Palestinians) to know the door is open. We understand they’re unhappy with that decision but the president wanted me to convey our willingness and desire to be a part of the peace process going forward,” Pence said.

Asked if the Egyptians and Jordanians had agreed to pressure the Palestinians to return to talks, Pence said: “I wouldn’t characterize it as that.”

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The Palestinians want to establish an independent state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. It says the entire city is its eternal and indivisible capital.

Pence said the U.S. State Department would spell out details in the coming weeks about a plan to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem by the end of 2019.

Israeli media have speculated that a 2019 embassy move could help Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu win reelection in a vote scheduled for November of that year.

Pence said he admired Netanyahu’s leadership and appreciated his friendship. Asked if he hoped for the prime minister’s reelection, Pence said: “I’m a strong supporter of Benjamin Netanyahu, but I don’t get a vote here.”

Pence toured Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial with Netanyahu on Tuesday before visiting the Western Wall, one of Judaism’s holiest sites. He stood solemnly with his hand on the wall and left a note, as people who pray there traditionally do.

The vice president also pressed European leaders to heed Trump’s call to forge a follow-up agreement to the Iran nuclear deal established under President Barack Obama’s administration.

“At the end of the day, this is going to be a moment where the European community has to decide whether they want to go forward with the United States or whether they want to stay in this deeply flawed deal with Iran,” he said.

Asked if he thought the United States would succeed in getting that kind of agreement with its European allies, Pence said: “We’ll see.”

Trump said earlier this month the United States would withdraw from the agreement unless its flaws were fixed.

(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Maayan Lubell and Ralph Boulton)

Israel wants White House to explain U.S. official’s Western Wall comment

David Friedman, new United States Ambassador to Israel, kisses the Western Wall after arriving in the Jewish state on Monday and immediately paying a visit to the main Jewish holy site, in Jerusalem's Old City May 15, 2017 REUTERS/Ammar Awad

By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel wants the White House to explain why a U.S. diplomat preparing President Donald Trump’s visit to Jerusalem said Judaism’s Holy Western Wall in its Old City is part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank, an Israeli official said on Monday.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem as its indivisible capital, a claim that is not recognized internationally, and the Western Wall – the holiest prayer site for Jews – is part of territory it captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Israel’s Channel 2 reported that during a planning meeting between U.S. and Israeli officials, the Israelis were told that Trump’s visit to the Western Wall was private, Israel did not have jurisdiction in the area and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not welcome to accompany Trump there.

Trump’s administration has been sending mixed messages in its dealings with a right-wing Israeli government that had hoped for a more sympathetic attitude from the Republican president after a rocky relationship with his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama.

“The statement that the Western Wall is in an area in the West Bank was received with shock,” said the official in Netanyahu’s office.

“We are convinced that this statement is contrary to the policy of President Trump … Israel has made contact with the U.S. on this matter,” the official said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

The new U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, departed from diplomatic protocol by visiting the Western Wall on Monday.

The visit, a week before Trump’s first foreign trip, coincided with a debate between the two countries on Trump’s election pledge to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.

It is highly unusual for a new envoy to visit the holy site just hours after arriving in Israel.

Friedman is an orthodox Jew who has raised funds for a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank that Israel captured together with East Jerusalem 50 years ago.

Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a future state along with the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip that is controlled by Islamist Hamas.

A bankruptcy lawyer by profession, Friedman has no

previous diplomatic experience. He will officially take up his role when he presents his credentials to Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Tuesday.

On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump was considering the best move to facilitate renewing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that have been frozen since 2014, hinting he might not make good on his election campaign promise.

“The president is being very careful to understand how such a decision would impact a peace process,” Tillerson told NBC’s “Meet the Press”.

Netanyahu responded by saying that moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem would not harm the peace process, but would do the opposite.

“It will advance it by righting a historical wrong and by shattering the Palestinian fantasy that Jerusalem is not the capital of Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Trump will embark on his first international trip since taking office on Friday and begin with visits to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the West Bank and Italy.

He will try to relaunch the peace process although the prospects for progress are unclear as both sides are entrenched in long-held positions.

Among the main bones of contention are Netanyahu insisting that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and the Palestinians calling for a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank.

(Editing by Louise Ireland)

U.N. adopts resolution denying Jewish ties to Temple Mount and Western Wall

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures as he opens the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office on September 11, 2016.

By Kami Klein

The United Nations cultural and heritage body, UNESCO, has voted on a resolution sponsored by several Arab countries that marginalizes Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, the place where Abraham offered Isaac and the location of the Holy of Holies in the Jewish temple and to the Western Wall, a remnant of the biblical temple compound.  UNESCO  condemned it’s belief in Israel’s escalating aggression regarding the holy site in Jerusalem’s Old City.

The resolution was backed by 24 countries, with six opposing it and 26 abstaining. The US, UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Lithuania and Estonia voted against the resolution; Russia and China were among those backing it.

In a Facebook post Prime Minister Netanyahu reacted with anger:

The theater of the absurd continues at UNESCO. Today UNESCO adopted a bizarre decision that denies the Jewish people’s connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.

They haven’t read the Bible. I suggest that UNESCO members visit the Arch of Titus in Rome where it is possible to see what the Romans brought to Rome after they destroyed and looted the Temple Mount 2,000 years ago.

One can see engraved on the Arch of Titus the seven-branched menorah that is the symbol of the Jewish people and the symbol of the Jewish state today.

Soon UNESCO will say that the Emperor Titus was dealing with Zionist propaganda.

To say that Israel has no connection to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall is like saying that China has no connection to the Great Wall of China, and Egypt has no connection to the pyramids. With this absurd decision UNESCO erases the little legitimacy left to it.

I believe that the historical truth is more powerful, and will prevail. And today we are dealing in truth.

 

Please read this article by The Guardian  for more information on this historic vote, which will affect the Jewish people as well as Christians all over the world.