The Wailing Wall
 Great picture from the New York Times of a Mormon woman (left) at the Wailing Wall :"I never really dreamed that I would make it there someday, but it was a dream come true. I had a very peaceful feeling when I was at the wall, and I was thinking about Jesus and that he could have been there. Just the thought of that was very overwhelming. I thought it was great that, with all those people of different faiths, we could all get together. And it was interesting to see how they were worshiping. They had their faces in the book and were moving their bodies back and forth. Then the way they have the women on one side and the men on the other: the young men were getting their bar mitzvahs, and the mothers were all standing on their chairs to try and see what was going on." NYT Travel, October 9, 2005. |
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Anonymous said ... (October 12, 2005 12:12 AM)
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Anonymous said ... (October 12, 2005 7:46 AM)
post a commentRonan, just wondering why you titled your post "The Wailing Wall". I followed your link back to the NYT Travel site and yep, they caption the picture "The Western Wall". I studied at BYU's Jerusalem Center, where we were taught to use the more respectful designation of "Western Wall"--so it caught my eye in your post.
(p.s. same situation with the "Holy Mount" rather than "Temple Mount" etc.)
Posted by Ashley
From the Jewish Virtual Library ("Western Wall" is indeed in vogue today):
The "Wailing-place" was a translation of El-Mabka, or "the Place of Weeping," the traditional Arabic term for the wall. Within a short time after the commencement of the British Mandate, however, "Wailing Wall" became the standard English term, nor did Jews have any compunctions about using it. Only after the Six-Day War in 1967 did it become de rigueur in Jewish circles to say "Western Wall"— a reflection of the feeling, first expressed by official Israeli usage and then spreading to the Diaspora, that, with the reunification of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty, there was no longer anything to wail about. Henceforward, the wall should be a place of celebration.
Posted by Ronan