How the Western Wall Became a Place of Jewish Prayer

Sept. 5 2017

Immediately following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, Jews evidently continued to pray either on the Temple Mount itself,or on the adjacent Mount of Olives, from which they could look down on the ruins of the sanctuary. In later years, Jews in Jerusalem found a variety of places on or near the Mount to gather for prayer and mourning, but only in the 16th century did the Western Wall—one of the outer retaining walls built by King Herod during his 1st-century-BCE renovations of the Temple—become the city’s most important Jewish sanctuary. F.M. Loewenberg explains how that came to be:

What is currently known as the Western Wall . . . is not mentioned in any source prior to the 16th century. . . . There exists an ancient tradition [dating to at least the 12th century] that “the Sh’khinah [Divine presence] will never move from the Western Wall.” But this saying does not refer to the present Western Wall but, instead, described the ruins of the western [inner] wall of the Second Temple building mentioned by many pilgrims. . . . Over time, as the visible ruins of the original temple walls disappeared, this saying was applied to the current Western Wall. . . .

Fourteen years after he had ordered the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s city walls, the Ottoman sultan] Suleiman the Magnificent instructed his court architect to prepare the area that came to be known as the Western Wall as a place for Jewish worship. Such a move became possible because on January 14, 1546, a severe earthquake hit the region. . . . The area hardest hit by this earthquake in Jerusalem was the Temple Mount and the quarters surrounding it, including many of the houses that had been built along the Western Wall. These were the houses that had prevented access to most of the wall. Now that the approach was blocked by ruins rather than by houses, . . . Suleiman felt ready to instruct his engineers to clear the ruins and to prepare a Jewish prayer site at the Western Wall.

Read more at Middle East Quarterly

More about: Herod, Ottoman Empire, Prayer, Second Temple, Western Wall

The Democratic Party Is Losing Its Grip on Jews

Since the 1930s, Jews have been one of America’s most solidly Democratic ethnic groups. Although, true to form, a majority again voted for Kamala Harris, something clearly has shifted. John Podhoretz writes:

Over the course of the past thirteen months, Jews in America have been harassed, threatened, seen their ancestral homeland derided as a settler-colonial genocidal state. They have seen Jewish kids mistreated on college campuses. And they have seen the Biden administration kowtow to Muslim populations hostile to Jews and the Jewish state in Michigan. They have heard the criticisms of Israel’s efforts to defend itself, and have noted the silence from the administration when it came to anti-Semitic assaults and the refusal of college presidents to condemn the treatment of Jews and Jewish topics under their ambit.

And Jews have acted.

The initial evidence from last night’s election is that there has been a significant shift in the Jewish vote from previous elections, a delta of anywhere from 10 to 40 percent overall.

Read more at Commentary

More about: 2024 Election, American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Democrats, U.S. Politics