(Video courtesy: The Jewish Filmmaker)
Many thousands of Jews gathered at the Kotel (the Western Wall) on the 2nd day of Chol HaMoed Pesach 5771 (the intermediate days of the Passover festival of 2011) for Birkat Kohanim (the Priestly Blessing) in accordance with the Torah's commandment in the book of Bamidbar (Numbers) chapter 6 verse 23-27.
The ceremony has become a tradition ever since the liberation of Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount) and the rest of the Old City of Jerusalem during the Six Day War in 1967. It is in commemoration of the Biblical obligation to visit the Holy Temple on the three annual festivals, namely, Pesach (Passover), Shavuot (Pentecost), and Sukkot (Tabernacles).
It is also a special opportunity for many Cohanim (Jews who trace their lineage to Aaron, the first High Priest) to fulfill the Biblical obligation of blessing the nation, and for non-Cohanim to be blessed (also a Biblical obligation, according to some).
It is to be noted that the Western Wall is merely a supportive wall of the Temple Mount in which the Holy Temple itself stood. The holiday prayers emphasize our goal of returning to the Mount, and not to the courtyards around it: "Bring us to Zion Your city with joy, and to Jerusalem, the House of Your Temple, with everlasting happiness... Build Your house as at the beginning, and establish Your Temple on its foundation; show us its construction and gladden us with its rectification... and to there we will ascend and be seen and bow down before You on our three festivals..."
Showing posts with label kotel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kotel. Show all posts
"No Jewish Prayers in Palestine's Jerusalem'- Mufti
If Jerusalem is divided, and it's eastern part made the capital of "Palestine" - world Jewry will be forever cut off from the hope it has held onto for 2000 years, and be once and for all prohibited from ascending the Temple Mount and even from praying at the Western Wall.
This warning was clearly sounded in an interview the former PLO-appointed mufti of Jerusalem gave to The Jerusalem Post this week, excerpts of which were published Thursday.
Ikrema Sabri emphatically told the Post no Israelite temple had ever stood on the Temple Mount.
What's more, the cleric insisted, the Western Wall - whose massive stones the entire world knows to have been laid by Herod the Great during the Roman occupation of the Land of Israel - had nothing to do with any temple either.
"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque. There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews.
"It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area," Sabri said.
"No Jews have the right to pray there. ... No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aqsa. Everyone knows that."
The Mufti's ranting underscored how the Muslim Arab effort to wrest Israel's holiest site from the Jewish people and entrench it under irreversible Islamic control is intensifying in the run-up to next-month's US-sponsored Middle East conference.
Washington is pushing for this conference, fully aware that the Arab side’s intent is to steal great chunks of Israel’s historic homeland for the creation of a Juden-rein Palestinian state that will never tolerate Jewish and Christian worship on or near the Temple Mount – or at any other site deemed sacred to Islam.
Reported by Stan Goodenough of Jerusalem NewsWire.
This warning was clearly sounded in an interview the former PLO-appointed mufti of Jerusalem gave to The Jerusalem Post this week, excerpts of which were published Thursday.
Ikrema Sabri emphatically told the Post no Israelite temple had ever stood on the Temple Mount.
What's more, the cleric insisted, the Western Wall - whose massive stones the entire world knows to have been laid by Herod the Great during the Roman occupation of the Land of Israel - had nothing to do with any temple either.
"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque. There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews.
"It was always only a mosque - all 144 dunams, the entire area," Sabri said.
"No Jews have the right to pray there. ... No Jewish prayer. If the Jews want real peace, they must not do anything to try to pray on Al-Aqsa. Everyone knows that."
The Mufti's ranting underscored how the Muslim Arab effort to wrest Israel's holiest site from the Jewish people and entrench it under irreversible Islamic control is intensifying in the run-up to next-month's US-sponsored Middle East conference.
Washington is pushing for this conference, fully aware that the Arab side’s intent is to steal great chunks of Israel’s historic homeland for the creation of a Juden-rein Palestinian state that will never tolerate Jewish and Christian worship on or near the Temple Mount – or at any other site deemed sacred to Islam.
Reported by Stan Goodenough of Jerusalem NewsWire.
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