Jewish history in Jerusalem Tour Routes and Entertainment Ideas

The Western Wall (HaKotel HaMa'aravi) or Wailing Wall is the most visited place in Israel and this is due to its great religious importance. In the Late Second Temple Period, in the year of 20 BCE, Herod the Great started to renovate the complex of the Temple. Herod the Great decided to expand the Temple Mount courtyard so that it could contain the hundreds of thousands pilgrims that came to visit it. In order to do that, he built four huge retaining walls around the Foundation Stone of Mount Moriah in order to support the extensive renovations and between them he built a system of domes and underground spaces which will serve as the infrastructure for the Temple Mount courtyard. The Western Wall (HaKotel HaMa'aravi) is the western retaining support wall of the Temple Mount and also a part of the wall which surrounded the sacred complex. At the time of the destruction of the Temple during the Roman rule many of the Western Wall’s upper layers were torn down as well and it turned into a center of pilgrimage which commemorates the sacred connection that exists between a People and their religion. During the last forty years the Western Wall Plaza was expanded and renovated for the convenience of the thousands of visitors and worshipers who come here. The archeological excavations on site were renewed and today the Western Wall Plaza serves as a kind of a huge open synagogue, to which visitors arrive in order to worship and put small pieces of paper, on which they write their requests of God, in between the Western Wall’s stones.

The Western Wall Tunnels are an underground system of manmade tunnels, entrances and passage ways in the Old City of Jerusalem, which pass under the buildings of the Muslim Quarter and serve as the continuation of the Western Wall. In order to reveal the continuation of the hidden wall, archeologists dug and exposed the full length of the Western Wall. In 1996 the tunnel opened into the Via Dolorosa Street which is in the Old Jerusalem’s Muslim Quarter. In the Western Wall Tunnels one can see the huge stones of the Western Wall, which King Herod the Great has planned. In one of these tunnels a huge stone has sunk and its weight is no less than 570 tons. In the Western Wall Tunnels the visitors pass underneath the houses of the Old City of Jerusalem and get to see the hidden sections of the Western Wall, a completely preserve Second Temple Period street, a tunnel form the time of the Hasmoneans (a ruling Jewish dynasty of Judea and the surrounding regions during the 2nd century BCE), the remains of a thousand years old synagogue and more. The walk underground itself and the proximity to the remains of the Jewish Temple are very much awe inspiring. The Western Wall Tunnels also pass near the Foundation Stone (Even HaShtiya), which is now located inside the Dome of the Rock, but is the holiest site in Judaism, the place of the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant was kept in the Jewish Temple which stood there before, and the spiritual junction of heaven and Earth, from where the world was created.