Israel’s Wailing Wall
The Western Wall of the temple platform holds enormous significance for Jewish people. It is a centre of worship, a place of prayer and scholarship. In fact, it is a rallying point for the nation.
One Jewish source puts it this way: “During the almost 2000 years of the Jewish exile and dispersion from Israel, many wars have been fought over Jerusalem. All told, the city has been destroyed and rebuilt no less than nine times—with each conqueror further attempting to obscure the glorious Jewish past. But through the centuries, one symbol has miraculously remained intact: the Western Wall. It represents the indestructibility of the Jewish People” (Aish Ha Torah Discovery Seminar Sourcebook).
Rabbi Shraga Simmons says, “The Wall is . . . a symbol of the Jewish people: Just as there have been many efforts to destroy the Wall—and yet it remains eternal, so too the Jewish People have outlived its enemies and remain eternal!”
The Western wall is all that remains of the temple built by Herod and destroyed in 68 AD by the conquering armies of the Roman general Titus. It became known as the “Wailing Wall,” and Jewish tradition says that it will never be destroyed, that the presence of God, as in the glory days of Jewish history, is still there and that all prayers uttered around the world ascend to God from there.
The Jewish Talmud (Jewish commentary on the oral law of the Jews) teaches that when the Temple was destroyed, all the Gates of Heaven were closed—all except one, that is—the Gate of Tears. Therein is the reason why that portion of the wall became known as the “Wailing Wall”—because of all the tears Jews have shed there.
In modern times, the state of Israel, under the Star of David, was formed in 1948. From 1948 to 1967, during which time Arab Palestinians occupied and administered that part of the Old City, Jews were banned from the site. Access to the wall was won by the Jewish people during the Six-day War of 1967. On June 7, 1967—the third day of the conflict—Israeli forces captured the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall.
Among those first to arrive at the site was a paratrooper, Moshe Amirav: “We ran there, a group of panting soldiers, lost on the plaza of the Temple Mount, searching for a giant stone wall. . . . Suddenly we stopped, thunderstruck. There it was before our eyes! Gray and massive, silent and restrained. The Western Wall!
“Slowly, slowly, I began to approach the Wall in fear and trembling like a pious cantor going to the lectern to lead the prayers. I approached it as the messenger of my father and my grandfather, of my great-grandfather and of all the generations in all the exiles who had never merited seeing it—and so they had sent me to represent them. . . . I put my hand on the stones and the tears that started to flow were not my tears. They were the tears of all Israel, tears of hope and prayer, tears of Chasidic tunes, tears of Jewish dances, tears which scorched and burned the heavy grey stone” (website www.aish.com).
The grey Western Wall is actually constructed of limestone. It consists of the huge foundation stones of the temple. The edges of the stones are etched to form a distinctive border around each one. This design is typical of the Roman-appointed king, Herod, who built the wall as a retaining wall for the Temple Mount.
After 2000 years, its base is now actually about six metres below the current floor of the prayer area. One of the stones in the wall measures more than 12 metres in length, the largest ever quarried; there’s nothing near it in all the structures of ancient Greece or Egypt, including the pyramids, and certainly not in the modern world. One can only wonder at the massive effort in conceiving of it, its quarrying and removal to its present location. No modern crane could lift such a stone. Adjacent is another stone weighing a calculated 400 tonnes, with others about that would tip the scales at 100. They can be viewed in archaeological tunnels opened in the past few years.
To visit Jerusalem, and more particularly the Western Wall, is a fascinating experience. The Orthodox Jews pray before the wall, holding the Torah (the Old Testament laws) and with a particular bobbing movement, bring its ancient words to their lips, in deep devotion.
Others will write their petitions and praises on scraps of paper, which are pressed into cracks between the ancient stones as a more lasting prayer than mere vocalisation and a tribute to the belief that all prayers rise to God from the wall. Some will pause in the reading room to the left of the wall for study and reflection, while others sit for long periods meditating, their faces to the wall.
Males and females are segregated at the wall, but all approach it with a feeling of its deep significance and reverence. On the Sabbath (Saturday), it is particularly noticeable, with signs about to remind tourist that in fact this is a holy place, and there are warnings forbidding photography.
It is interesting to observe certain rites of passage celebrated at the wall. Such include the Bar Mitzvah, in which Jewish males who have reached the age of 13 are then considered as adults and thus come “under the Law.” Fathers, brothers, uncles and other male friends participate, while at a distance, proud mothers and significant females look on in loving support.
Why such fascination with these relics of the ancient, moribund building?
The Temple, according to Rabbi Shraga Simmons, was the centre of the spiritual world. “It was the main conduit for the flow of Godliness into this world,” he claims. “When the Temple stood, there was respect for God, for His Torah—and for each other. There was no doubt about God’s existence. There were no atheists. Everybody acknowledged one God and understood the genius of His laws. The world was filled with awe of God and love of God.”
So its significance relates to a sense of the presence of God. This was clearly evident from ancient times. This identification with the presence of God traces its roots to the building of the first, portable sanctuary during the desert wanderings of Israel, led by Moses, on their Exodus from Egyptian captivity.
This first sanctuary was built under the direct instruction of God. Every detail was specified and every board, piece of cloth, furniture, decoration and dimension held deep meaning for the people. It was accepted as the dwelling place of God on earth. Each of its artefacts as well as the numerous daily and yearly services pointed to one fact: God was with His people in the sanctuary and, if you wanted to be near God, then you needed to go there. Its original purpose is spelled out in Exodus 25:8: “Have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them.”
God wanted to enter into a relationship with His people, and closeness with God meant closeness to the sanctuary. Hence, today, even after the passing of so many millennia, this concept is still hugely significant in the Jewish mind.
Several hundred years after the Exodus, the temporary sanctuary was replaced by a permanent structure, the temple of Solomon, conceived of by his father King David. This grand structure embodied the idea that only the best should be given to God.
But, again, its central notion was that here was a place where a person came to meet their God. This was expressed in Solomon’s dedicatory prayer for this completed temple: “I have built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell for ever” (2 Chronicles 6:2).
Solomon’s temple was razed to the ground by the Babylonians following the siege of Jerusalem in 586 BC, and most of the population was taken captive to Babylon. In exile, the Jews were not only isolated from their homes and ancestral lands, but from the presence of their God. While there was opportunity for worship individually, the central, national focus was lost.
Upon their return some 70 years later, one of the first things they did was to build a new temple. But it was merely a shadow of its predecessor, which was distressing for those who remembered the old temple of Solomon. This “place of the presence” lacked the grandeur and glory of the former temple.
Some 400 years later, with the coming of Herod the Great, an obviously enthusiastic builder, workmen spent 40 years building a glorious structure that was the pride of the Jewish nation at the time of Jesus. It is its foundation stones that form the Western Wall of contemporary times.
A Samaritan woman of Palestine once inquired of Jesus as to the most appropriate place of worship—Mount Zion (of the Jews) or Mount Gerizim (of the Samaritans): “Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place we must worship is in Jerusalem” (John 4:20), she asserted.
Jesus’ response was that true worship is much more a matter of one’s spirit and intent—the heart—than of geographic location. He said that a time would come when neither of the locations would really matter.
It is this reality that lies at the heart (chapter 9) of the New Testament book of Hebrews, which asserts that the real sanctuary or temple is a heavenly one and that any earthly temple is really only a copy of the true.
Since this is the case, the writer argues, access to God is available at any time and at any place. Thus we don’t have to look to human structures when seeking the presence of God. Nor do we look to human beings as His representative on earth, as was the High Priest of the ancient temples, for Christ is our High Priest—our intermediary—and serves us in heaven. When you can grasp this fact and what it implies, true liberation will follow.
For more information on the Western Wall and a virtual “tour,” visit www.aish.com/wallcam
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