The Western Wall (The Kotel)

A part of the wall around the Holy Temple and a holy site for the Jewish people The Western Wall is the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount . Over 2040 years ago, King Herod decided to expand the platform of the Temple Mount in order to make room for the hundreds of thousands of Jews and non Jews who ascended to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. He constructed four enormous retaining walls around the Temple Mount and filled them in with several stories of arched passageways.

The Western Wall is the longest of the four retaining walls 488 meters long. It is also the wall closest to the Holy of Holies on the summit of Mount Moriah. The original Western Wall probably reached the height of a modern 13 story building.

During the Mameluke period (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries), most of the Western Wall was buried behind new construction bordering on the Temple Mount. Today there are only two plazas in which the Western Wall is exposed above ground and can serve as a prayer area: the well known Western Wall Plaza and the Kotel HaKatan (Small Wall) north of Shalshelet Street.

In the Western Wall Plaza and in the excavations on the south and the tunnels on the north, we can literally touch some of the remains of our magnificent past, and yearn for the future. The symbolic significance of the Western Wall has become more powerful as time went on. In Biblical times, it was simply the street closest to the Temple Mount, and as such, was the venue of open squares, shops, public ritual baths, and other buildings connected to the service in the Holy Temple.

Today, the Western Wall has become a pilgrimage site, much as the Holy Temple was then. During the Ottoman and British Mandate periods, the densely populated slum neighborhood, and the narrow winding alleyways leading to the Western Wall made access difficult and public prayer there almost impossible. Nevertheless, thousands of Jews from all over the world were drawn to the Western Wall, especially on holidays.

Over the years, a Moslem tradition developed that also attached religious significance to the Western Wall. According to this tradition, Mohammed tied his wondrous horse there before ascending to heaven. These conflicting traditions aroused tremendous conflict during the British Mandate Period. They provided a basis for the British Kings Order in Council and the International Commission for the Western Wall to rule that the Moslems had the sole ownership of the Western Wall and the Haram a Sharif area. Accordingly, provisions were enacted forbidding Jews reading of the Torah (except for on important holidays), singing, dancing, blowing the Shofar, bringing any kind of stool, carpet, screen (to separate the sexes), shade, or other appurtenance to the Western Wall area. During Israels War of Independence in 1948, the Western Wall, along with most of East Jerusalem, fell to the Arab Legion. According to the cease fire agreement of 1949, free access to all Holy Sites was guaranteed to both sides, including of course Jewish access to the Western Wall, the Mount of Olives cemetery, and other holy sites in East Jerusalem. This agreement was never honored, and the holy sites were desecrated and destroyed.

One of the high points of the Six Day War in 1967 was the conquest by Israel of the Old City and the Western Wall. Since then, the Western Wall has been renovated, to the great satisfaction of the hundreds of thousands of visitors and worshippers at the site. Floor level has been lowered by about two meters, allowing access to two more courses of the Herodian Wall. The Plaza serves as a vast open air synagogue and a most popular venue for Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations and other ceremonies on happy and sad occasions.