The Jewish New Year began Oct. 2, but preparations in Israel started weeks ago. Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites of Israel, along with several assistants undertook a biannual tradition on Sept. 15. With bags and wooden poles in hand, they set out to extract prayer notes from between the wall’s stones to make space for new petitions in the year ahead.
That’s no small feat. Millions of people have visited the site annually, including more than 12 million in 2019. The Western Wall is the only remaining piece of a border that once fully enclosed the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site. This was the location of both the First and Second Temples—where, at one point, the Ark of the Covenant was stored, and where Abraham is believed to have constructed an altar on which to sacrifice his son Isaac.
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