Western Wall (Wailing Wall), Jerusalem

The situation, which aggravated because of an anti-Jewish pogrom in Jerusalem in 1929, caused the British mandate authorities to establish a special investigative commission, which was later replaced by an international commission of the League of Nations. This commission in the summer of 1931 stated that Moslems have an irrefutable right over the Western Wall; however the Jews have an unarguable right to pray there. But they are forbidden to place benches and partitions by the Western Wall as well as to trumpet in shofar (a spiritual musical instrument made of ram’s or goat’s horn). The Arab leaders rejected the decision of the commission, whereas official Jewish institutions of Palestine under the mandate recognized it. The prohibition to trumpet in shofar by the Western Wall was received by many Jews as a humiliation of national dignity and a dangerous political precedent. Starting from Yom-Kippur in 1930, that is, in the days when the Jewish tradition encourages to trumpet the shofar, members of the Betar movement blew the shofar by the Western Wall and were arrested and imprisoned because of that.

Based on a peace treaty in 1949, the Jews were granted access to the Western Wall, which –– as well as the entire Old City of Jerusalem –– was occupied by Jordan and remained under its rule after the treaty. However, contrary to the agreements, Jordan authorities throughout the entire 19 years of occupation of the eastern part of Jerusalem did not allow the Jews to come to the Western Wall. On the third day of the Six-Day War (June 7, 1967) a regiment of Israeli paratroopers reached the Western Wall, and the sound of shofar in the hands of S. Goren, who at that time was a chief military rabbi, proclaimed its liberation. Almost right after that, a mass pilgrimage of Jews from all over Israel and abroad began to flood to the Western Wall. The houses of the Arab district Mughrabi adjacent closely to the Western Wall were soon torn down, and on the festival of Shavouot, the first one after the ending of the Six-Day War, around a quarter of a million Jews attended the sanctuary. The buildings blocking the southern part of the Wailing Wall were also torn down later; the territory in front of it was turned from a narrow dead end — 28 by 3.6 meters — into a spacious square, the significant part of which is designated for prayer. Two more layers of Jordanian brickwork were exposed. Here at any time of day or night in any season one can meet Jews praying or reading Torah or Psalms.

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