the Wailing Wall

The Western Wall (Hebrew: הכותל המערבי, HaKotel HaMa'aravi), or simply The Kotel, is a retaining wall from the time of the Jewish Second Temple of Jerusalem (see also Temple of Herod). It is sometimes referred to as the Wailing Wall, or as the al-Buraq Wall, in a mix of English and Arabic. The Temple was the most sacred building in Judaism. Herod the Great built vast retaining walls around Mount Moriah, expanding the small, quasi-natural plateau on which the First and Second Temples stood into the wide open spaces of the Temple Mount seen today.

In recent centuries, Jews were allowed little or no access to the site, such as when Turkey (the Ottoman Empire) ruled over it for 400 years (1515-1917), followed by the British Mandate of Palestine (1917-1948) and the Jordanian rule of Jerusalem (1948-1967). Only when the Israel Defense Forces won a victory in the 1967 Six Day War were Jews finally able to gain free access to the site.

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