Family Is All That Matters 126
The Western Wall (Hebrew: הכותל המערבי), or simply The Kotel,
is a retaining wall in Jerusalem that dates om the time of
the Jewish Second Temple (515 BCE-70 CE). It is sometimes
referred to as the Wailing Wall in reference to the Jews who
mourned the destruction of the Temple, but this name is
becoming less common. The Western Wall is part of the bigger
religious site in the Old City of Jerusalem called Har ha-Bayit
(the Temple Mount) to Jews and Christians, or Al-Haram al-
Qudsi al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) to Muslims. Its holiness
is derived om its proximity to the sacred Holy of Holies on the
Temple Mount, which is the Most Holy Place in Judaism. The
Temple in Jerusalem was the most sacred building in Judaism.
Herod the Great built vast retaining walls around Mount
Moriah, expanding the small, quasi-natural plateau on which
the First and Second Temples stood into the wide open spaces
of the Temple Mount seen today. This makes the Western Wall
the holiest location in Judaism that is generally accessible to the
Jewish people for prayer.
Jewish men and women can be found praying at the wall at every
hour, though a mechitza, or divider, separates the men's section
of the wall om the women's section. B'nai mitzvah celebrations
can also be held there and people of different ages travel om
all over the world to have their ceremonies at The Kotel. It is
also a tradition to deposit a slip of paper with wishes or prayers
on it into the cracks of the wall. Looking closely, one can see
hundreds of tiny, folded papers stuffed inside the grooves.
The Western Wall
