Western Wall

Overview

The Western Wall is a surviving section of the western retaining wall of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Israel. Built to support the expanded platform around the Jewish Temple, it was not a wall of the Temple building itself. The distinction matters: the Temple Mount, where the Second Temple stood until its destruction by Rome in 70 C.E., is the holiest site in Judaism. The Western Wall is a place of prayer beside that site. Its stones, location and centuries of Jewish devotion have made it one of the most recognizable symbols of Jewish attachment to Jerusalem.

The exposed section beside the present prayer plaza is only part of a much longer wall. Sections continue beyond the plaza, including beneath later buildings in the Old City. The Small Western Wall, a free-to-visit section in the Muslim Quarter, stands closer to the traditional location of the Holy of Holies than the familiar open prayer area. The name Western Wall therefore describes the historic retaining structure, not merely the short stretch facing the plaza. Visitors also encounter portions of the wall through archaeological routes beyond the main prayer area.

The Old City occupies about one square kilometer and contains the Temple Mount, the Western Wall, the Dome of the Rock, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. These are distinct sites with distinct histories and religious roles. The Wall’s significance rests both on its physical connection to the Jewish Temples and on the long Jewish history of mourning, pilgrimage and prayer associated with their site. For Jews, it also represents a connection with Jerusalem extending across roughly three millennia.

Biblical and ancient history

Jewish sacred history centers on the Temple in Jerusalem. The First Temple and, later, the Second Temple stood on the Temple Mount. During the Second Temple period, King Herod enlarged the mount’s platform with monumental retaining walls. The Western Wall formed part of that engineering work: it held back the raised platform surrounding the Temple rather than forming part of the sanctuary. Most pilgrims in the Temple period approached and entered the mount through gates in its southern wall, a route different from the one taken by many visitors to the Western Wall plaza today.

The Temple was a center of Jewish worship and pilgrimage. Its destruction by Roman forces in 70 C.E. ended that form of Temple worship, but it did not end the site’s importance in Jewish memory and practice. Roman forces left an outer retaining wall standing after razing the Temple. The surviving wall offered a tangible connection to the place where the Temple had stood, although the custom of gathering for regular prayer at today’s Western Wall developed much later. In the early centuries after the destruction, Roman authorities barred Jews from entering Jerusalem. Jews mourned the Temple from the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Temple Mount from the east.

In the fourth century, the Christian scholar Jerome described Jews mourning the destroyed Temple from the Mount of Olives on the Ninth of Av, the annual day of mourning known in Hebrew as Tisha B’Av. His account illustrates Jewish attachment to the Temple site before prayer at the present Western Wall became customary. A seventh- or eighth-century midrash attributes to Rabbi Acha the teaching that God’s presence never leaves the Western Wall. That early reference may concern the former western wall of the Temple building rather than the retaining wall visited today. The earliest clear use of the Hebrew name ha-kotel ha-ma’aravi for today’s Wall appears in the work of the 11th-century poet Ahima’az ben Paltiel.

The Hebrew name, commonly shortened to ha-Kotel, long predates the English expression “Wailing Wall.” That English name entered wider use under British rule after Britain took Jerusalem in 1917. It referred to the mourning associated with the Temple’s destruction, but it never became customary among traditional Jews and is not used in Hebrew. “Western Wall” also conveys the wall’s full relationship to the western side of the Temple Mount, including sections beyond the principal prayer area.

Later history

Clear evidence of Jews praying at today’s Western Wall begins in the 16th century. Sultan Suleyman I restored Jerusalem’s city walls in 1536 and encouraged Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal to settle in the city. An earthquake in 1546 damaged the Temple Mount and its surroundings. Suleyman then ordered rubble from homes beside the western retaining wall cleared to make space for Jewish prayer. He issued a decree granting Jews the right to pray there in perpetuity, and his successors honored it for more than 400 years. The new prayer area gave Jewish visitors a defined place beside the Temple Mount at a time when direct access to the mount and its sacred spaces was limited.

Jewish pilgrimage to the Kotel ha-Ma’aravi grew over the following centuries. Visitors from around the world came to pray and offer thanks to God. Early visits were often tied to Tisha B’Av or to prayers concerning personal troubles; regular daily use should not be projected backward onto every earlier period. For centuries, worshippers reached the Wall through an alley beside the Mughrabi Quarter that measured about four meters wide and 28 meters long. As visits increased, the confined space filled with worshippers on Shabbat and Jewish festivals. Regular prayer at the Wall became established in the late 19th or early 20th century. In 1873, Samuel Manning described Jews gathering there every Friday to mourn the Temple.

Rules for worship became a source of conflict during British rule. British authorities prohibited erecting a mechitzah, the partition used to separate men and women during prayer. In 1941, the British-appointed chief rabbis issued conduct rules for worshippers that included separation of men and women. Disputes over prayer arrangements at the Wall became a vehicle for wider anti-Jewish incitement before the 1929 Hebron massacre. The controversy showed how a narrow place of worship could become a focus of conflict far beyond the alley itself.

Jordanian forces captured Jerusalem’s Old City during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Jews were expelled from the Old City and barred from the Western Wall and Temple Mount. Despite Jordan’s pledge in the 1949 armistice arrangements to permit Jewish visits to holy sites, it allowed no Israeli Jew to visit the Wall during its 19 years of control, from 1948 to 1967. Jewish religious sites in the Old City were also destroyed or desecrated. The armistice line divided Jerusalem during those years; it did not erase the city’s Jewish history or the exclusion of Jews from their holy places.

During the Six-Day War, Jordan attacked Israel, and Israeli paratroopers entered the Old City through Lion’s Gate. On June 7, 1967, the Israel Defense Forces liberated Jerusalem’s Old City, the Western Wall and the Temple Mount. General Uzi Narkiss directed troops toward the Wall during the advance. At the site, Brigadier General Shlomo Goren recited a memorial prayer and sounded the shofar; Israeli soldiers sang “Hatikva.” The return to the Wall ended the exclusion imposed during Jordanian rule and became a defining moment in modern Israeli and Jewish history.

After 1967, Israel created the large Western Wall plaza by removing houses beside the Wall, including those in the area of the former narrow alley. The open space enabled much larger gatherings, but its appearance differs markedly from the approach used by worshippers for centuries. Israel maintained Muslim administration of the Temple Mount through the Waqf, while the Western Wall became a principal site for public Jewish prayer. The different arrangements at the neighboring sites remain central to questions of religious access in Jerusalem.

Archaeology

Archaeology around the Western Wall reveals both the scale of Herod’s construction and the changing ways people reached the Temple Mount. The massive retaining stones belong to an engineered platform rather than the Temple building. Remains near ancient entrances include a ritual bath whose steps alternate in length. Researchers believe that pattern was deliberate, interrupting habitual movement before entry to a sacred place. Stone cups and storage vessels found in the wider Temple period setting also illuminate Jewish ritual practice: under Jewish law, stone vessels do not contract ritual impurity, so their use justified the extra effort needed to make them.

The Western Wall Tunnels, opened as an archaeological attraction in 1996, follow the wall beyond the exposed prayer section. The route begins near the Western Wall plaza and emerges in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. It runs outside the Temple Mount; it does not pass beneath the mount or near Al-Aqsa Mosque. The tunnels make the longer retaining wall visible and show why the historic Western Wall cannot be reduced to the short section used for public prayer.

Another route linking the plaza with the Temple Mount passes by the Mughrabi Gate. In 2007, Israel conducted salvage excavations while repairing access to that gate. The work took place away from Al-Aqsa Mosque. Israel installed cameras at the excavation site so observers could view the work in real time and assess claims that it endangered the mosque. Assertions that the Western Wall Tunnels run beneath Al-Aqsa Mosque, or that the Mughrabi Gate work damaged it, misstate the routes and location of those excavations.

The Wall’s surviving sections also preserve the difference between ancient Jerusalem’s approaches and modern visitor routes. Temple period pilgrims generally ascended from the south, whereas many visitors now descend through the Old City toward the plaza. The Small Western Wall in the Muslim Quarter offers another accessible point along the same western retaining structure. Its proximity to the traditional location of the Temple’s innermost sanctuary gives it particular interest for visitors seeking to understand the full extent and religious geography of the Wall.

Religious significance

The Western Wall’s holiness in Jewish practice derives from its proximity and physical connection to the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount itself, not the retaining wall, is Judaism’s holiest site. For many Jews, the Wall became a place to mourn the Temples’ destruction, pray for personal and communal needs, express gratitude and mark moments of national importance. Its importance cannot be measured solely by the date when regular prayer there became established: devotion to the Temple site long preceded the 16th-century prayer area and the modern plaza.

Jewish prayer at the Wall encompasses varied traditions. Worshippers place written prayers between its stones, gather for festivals and observe commemorations there. The Wall also serves as a symbol of Jewish continuity for people who do not follow a single religious practice. The scene recorded on June 7, 1967, included soldiers weeping for fallen comrades, a memorial prayer, a shofar and the singing of Israel’s national anthem. Those acts joined religious memory with the return of Jewish access to the Old City.

The name Kotel has become familiar far beyond Israel. It identifies a place visited by Jews from around the world, while the longer western retaining wall remains an archaeological and historical whole. The Small Western Wall and sections reached through the tunnels reinforce that distinction. A visitor standing at the principal prayer plaza sees only one part of the structure that enclosed the Temple Mount. Its cultural and religious meaning, however, extends beyond the stones immediately visible there.

Jerusalem’s sacred geography also requires care in naming nearby places. The Dome of the Rock is a shrine on the Temple Mount, while Al-Aqsa Mosque is a separate mosque on the same compound. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a Christian holy site elsewhere in the Old City. Identifying these places precisely helps explain why access arrangements, archaeological work and names used for the Western Wall carry such significance to the communities connected with Jerusalem.

Access and disputes

Since 1967, access to the Western Wall has been shaped by questions of religious practice as well as security and administration. At the principal prayer area, Orthodox worship arrangements separate men and women. Other Jewish communities have sought space for mixed-gender and non-Orthodox prayer. The dispute concerns how a site significant to the entire Jewish people can accommodate their differing practices. It also reflects the plaza’s modern form: a space created after 1967 around a wall that had previously been reached through a narrow alley.

Israel’s Supreme Court has addressed restrictions affecting women at the Wall. In response to petitions, it ordered the government to justify barring women from chanting from Torah scrolls there. It also prohibited searches aimed at finding religious objects on women approaching the site, while allowing ordinary security searches to continue. The court held that access to Robinson’s Arch near the Wall did not, by itself, amount to access to the principal Wall prayer area. These rulings placed women’s ability to worship at the center of the access debate.

In January 2016, Israel’s Cabinet approved a Western Wall prayer agreement by a 15–5 vote. It called for an expanded egalitarian prayer section near Robinson’s Arch under a pluralist committee, alongside continued Orthodox authority over the traditional prayer sections. The agreement sought to give Jews who pray together without separating men and women a more substantial space at the Wall. Israel’s government later froze the plan, prompting renewed objections from Jewish organizations that had supported the compromise. The disagreement has remained a prominent question in relations between Israel and Jewish communities abroad.

The Wall’s Jewish identity has also been challenged through official language and education. A 2016 Arab-sponsored UNESCO draft repeatedly used “Buraq Plaza” for the Western Wall Plaza while placing “Western Wall Plaza” in quotation marks. A 2017 fifth-grade Islamic Education textbook described the Wall as sacred exclusively to Muslims. Such descriptions exclude its documented connection to the Jewish Temple Mount and the history of Jewish prayer there. They also treat a religious name for the site as grounds to erase another community’s history, despite the physical remains and centuries of recorded Jewish attachment.

Security tensions around the adjacent Temple Mount can affect access to the Wall. During violence from May 7 to 10, 2021, Arab rioters had stockpiled stone slabs, rocks and fireworks to attack Israeli police and Jews at the Western Wall. The Wall and Temple Mount therefore remain closely linked in practical questions of safety, even though they are distinct places with different prayer arrangements. Israel’s control of the Old City since 1967 restored Jewish access denied under Jordanian rule, while Muslim worship has continued on the Temple Mount under its separate administration.